


Incandescence

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Attempt at Humor, Character as Author, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 17:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4069240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco has become a successful writer by novelizing the lives of heroes from the war with Voldemort. He's managed to charm the most difficult and reticent into talking to him. Now he thinks he's ready for the ultimate challenge: persuading Harry Potter, who's notoriously close-mouthed, to give him both the material and the permission for a novel based on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Irresistible Force

**Author's Note:**

> A story written several years ago; 
> 
> This takes place fairly far in the future after DH, but ignores the epilogue.

_And as she stood within the arms of the man she loved, Selene understood, finally, that she, and not he, was the one who had made her darkness yield to the light._  
  
Draco sat back and took a deep breath, letting his fingers relax. He’d been busy with the ending of  _The Hope-Well_  all morning, and scribbling over a thousand words with a quill was no easy task. For long moments, he did nothing but sit in his desk chair and flex his hands.  
  
At last he opened his eyes and looked with calm pride at the complete manuscript in front of him.  
  
 _Done on time according to both my internal clock and Murray’s ridiculous deadline. This deserves some celebration._  
  
He turned and walked three strides across the small tower room to pick up a waiting bottle of Fairyflower. The pale golden wine bubbled and hissed as it poured into the glass, and a fragrance of lavender filled the room. Draco sipped, enjoying the first bitterness that faded almost at once into the kind of fuzzy sweetness that gathered along the tongue and lingered.   
  
He had a garden immediately beneath the tower window that was filled with perfectly ordinary blossoms: daisies, morning glories, and sunflowers. Draco leaned an elbow on the window and stared for long moments, enjoying the combination of wine on his tongue, warm stone beneath his skin, and brilliant colors in front of his eyes.  
  
Then he whirled around and flicked his wand to call his owl, Justice, who lived in an owlery on the roof. The great horned owl landed on the table and looked at the manuscript in distaste, not deigning to notice him. Draco chuckled and cast a copying spell—he would never trust the only copy of one of his novels to owl post again after what had happened to  _Fairest Morning_ —and then bundled the original manuscript carefully into a special pouch Murray had given him years ago. Back and forth the pouch went from Draco to his publisher, and it always came back intact. It was made of toughened leather enchanted against any weight and any puncturing instrument, including an owl’s talons.  
  
“Careful with it, now,” Draco said, as he said every time.  
  
Justice turned his head, blinked his eyes once at him in admonishment, and then turned and leaped out the window. Draco stood there watching him fade into the gold and blue of the June morning.  
  
Then he turned about, humming, and stretched his arms in front of him as he considered his next project.  
  
Really, there weren’t many people he hadn’t already interviewed for his  _Heroic Lives_  series, which told the fictionalized stories of heroes who’d fought Voldemort.  _The Hope-Well_  was based on Luna Lovegood, and it had taken Draco the utmost care and skill to get the necessary interviews with her—after all, she had been his family’s prisoner—but he’d succeeded. He had the notes for a novel on Ollivander waiting, but he’d never been able to muster up much enthusiasm for that project; it didn’t have a title.  
  
He considered Professor Snape. Then, as always, his mind shied away. He thought he needed to be a better writer than he was to do justice there.  
  
 _Not to mention the argument I’ll have with Murray over including a former Death Eater in a series titled_  Heroic  _Lives._  
  
He thought a few more minutes about it, then shrugged. No doubt the intuition would come to him as it always did. Maybe even the deep interest he needed to tug him through the account of Ollivander’s activities.  
  
He turned to pick up the  _Daily Prophet_ , which he hadn’t had time to read that morning in his intense desire to get  _The Hope-Well_  finished. He scanned the front page idly; he had an authors’ lunch to attend in an hour, and he needed a few harmless items of news to talk about.  
  
Then he blinked, and found himself narrowing in on the single photograph the  _Prophet_  had placed even above the headline.  
  
The photograph was of Harry Potter, and he was training his wand on a large man with yellow teeth and fingernails, who snarled and snapped at him. Magical bonds must have held the man back, but memories made Draco shudder anyway. He knew exactly who the man was, without needing the headline to tell him.   
  
 _ **HARRY POTTER CAPTURES FENRIR GREYBACK!**_  
  
“Well done, Potter,” Draco muttered. “And it only took you, what, sixteen years?” But the words were absent as his mind leaped into motion.  
  
Why in the world had it never occurred to him to do a novel on Harry Potter?   
  
It was practically required for a series called  _Heroic Lives_. It was the natural culmination to such a series. Potter’s life presented enough material that Draco could wring two or three books out of it without trying. There was darkness and light, humor and drama, last-minute escapes and desperate triumphs. Draco wondered if someone had knocked a gap in his brain that was filling back in only now.  
  
Of course there were arguments against his attempting it. He and Potter had been enemies. Plenty of other people had written books about him, and continued to do so, because somehow Potter had managed to remain as inspiring as a thirty-three-year old Auror as he had been when a young hero of eighteen. Draco had suffered some humiliating reversals and rescues at Potter’s hands during the war, and would have had to conquer his own pride and memories to begin an interview.  
  
Now that Draco was considering them head-on, all those arguments puffed away to reveal themselves as the barriers of dandelion fluff they were.   
  
So what if he and Potter had been enemies? He had persuaded Ollivander and Lovegood into interviews, and they had more reason to hate him. A schoolboy rivalry was nothing compared to the tortures that Draco had been part of inflicting on them. If he was really more worried about his years at Hogwarts than what he had done as a slave of Voldemort, he could point to successes in interviewing Neville Longbottom and Hermione Granger, too.  
  
Yes, other people had written books about Potter, but not with the skill and the insight that Draco would. He’d begun writing to heal his own wounds left over from the war; he had continued because he was good at it. His novel on Potter, or his novels, was a masterpiece waiting to be born.  
  
The last reason was the most insubstantial, and Draco could not believe he had seriously let it stand in his way. He rolled his eyes.  _If I can’t overcome my own insecurities and weaknesses by this point…_  
  
He knew this was the right project to choose for his next one. Energy surged through him, roiling and billowing like a wave. He could feel his fingers twitching—with desire to pick up a quill rather than with spasms or aches.   
  
He smiled as he sat down to write a letter to Potter. It would have to wait until Justice had returned from delivering the manuscript to Murray, but then it would be delivered. Potter would doubtless agree to a meeting, if only because he was curious about what Draco wanted.  
  
Once that was agreed to, Draco had him. None of his subjects ever wanted to escape him, once they found the opportunity to pour their cases into a sympathetic ear.   
  
And Draco was curious as well—wildly curious. He’d read a few of the Potter biographies and glanced often at the newspaper articles, but they didn’t represent the real man Potter was. What would he say? What did he look like when not showing off for the cameras? How had he dealt with the burden of becoming the symbol and focus of an entire generation’s hopes?  
  
Draco smiled when he realized that the questions so occupying his mind had caused him to put on his shirt backwards. That was an excellent sign that his next novel was the right one.  
  
*  
  
“…And then we found out that Catherina had submitted the entire manuscript of a Muggle play called  _Much Ado About Nothing_  instead of the play she’d contracted with us for.” Angela Ellback sighed and swallowed half the glass of juice she held. “She  _knows_  that we employ readers familiar with Muggle culture. She’s not the first witch or wizard who’s thought they could plagiarize some classic our world is unlikely to be familiar with. Why would she try that?”  
  
Draco smiled over his own glass of juice and picked up one of the small sandwiches from a passing plate held by a house-elf. He liked Angela, who was not only a reader for Murray’s but a copy-editor who returned his manuscripts looking as if she’d bitten into them and drawn out the inky blood. Someone had to find and correct the mistakes, and Draco was just as glad that he wasn’t left to discover them after his book was in print.  
  
“Catherina is good at writing light tales about princesses in glass towers,” he said. “It’s a shame she didn’t stick to that.”  
  
“She claims that there’s much money but no respect in that.” Angela snorted rudely, and hard enough to move her rather large glasses down her nose. She tilted them back into place. “There are two kinds of writers: those who deserve respect, and those who deserve everything else. Why she couldn’t be content with her place in the second category, I don’t know.”  
  
Draco chuckled and leaned back against the wall, looking around happily at his colleagues. Half of the most prominent writers in wizarding Britain were there, mingling with editors, publishers, printers, and high-profile spellcrafters whose magic helped the industry roll along. Rita Skeeter was attempting to pitch a new biography of Dumbledore, by the sound of her undertones, to a thoroughly bored-looking Pamela Waterstone. Draco wouldn’t count on that market lasting much longer. Even Skeeter’s readers had exhausted most of the interest to be found in the sex scandals of a wizard almost twenty years dead.  
  
Terry Boot was reciting a tragic poem to an enthralled assembly. Draco rolled his eyes. There was someone he had investigated as material for a novel and as hastily backed away from. Boot hoarded his small amount of suffering in the war and doled it out in slender poetry books, to the point that there was no room for anyone else to make a profit on it.  
  
Denise Bellanthe, her long blonde hair wound over her left shoulder, was talking with another representative of Murray’s, Edgar Bullion, who looked like a frog but was one of the deadliest negotiators Draco had ever dealt with. Not quite deadly enough to corner Denise, though, who so far wrote her best-selling Goblin Wars historicals independently of any publisher and sold them to the highest bidder. Edgar had been trying to win her for Murray’s since Draco sent in the first volume of  _Heroic Lives_. What ten years hadn’t done, an afternoon was unlikely to.  
  
Yolanda Timpany leaned against a wall by herself and drank a tall glass of juice with a sardonic expression, occasionally fastening her cat-like golden gaze on a guest and staring at him or her for an exceptionally long time. Draco shivered in spite of himself. Yolanda wrote surreal, savage short stories from the eyes of house-elves, centaurs, merfolk, madwomen, and similarly damaged people. She also had a well-deserved reputation for slashing portrayals of people she didn’t like. She’d caused the loss of at least two elections for Minister and more money than Draco cared to think about. He never wanted to attract her attention.  
  
She glanced over at him as if she’d felt him think that. Draco hastily returned his eyes to Angela’s face and asked the first question that popped into his head. “What’s the market for books on Potter like these days?”  
  
Angela had never been slow on the uptake, even when Draco was struggling to explain the particular twists and turns that a chapter should take to her. She peered at him through one side of her glasses and said in a sly tone, “Why, Draco Malfoy, have you managed to decide on your next novel?”  
  
“Women your age shouldn’t be arch,” Draco told her firmly. Angela laughed. “And yes, I’m setting up an interview with him, though whether he’ll agree I don’t know.”  
  
Angela stopped laughing with startling abruptness and looked at him with an expression Draco had never seen from her before. “If you don’t have an interview yet,” she said, “and if he hasn’t actually agreed to talk to you about his experiences during the war, then I don’t think that book will get written.”  
  
Draco folded his arms and stared at her incredulously. “Do you doubt my work ethic  _that_  much? Or my ability to charm someone?”  
  
“It has nothing to do with your charms.” By now, Angela looked the way Draco imagined she would if someone had died. “It has everything to do with the fact that Potter doesn’t talk about what happened during the war. With anyone.”  
  
Draco sighed, the sigh that he often used when Skeeter tried to interview him. “I never thought you had such a poor memory. Potter did plenty of talking after the war was over, remember? He talked about his experiences during the Battle of Hogwarts, and he practically gave us the whole history of how he managed to defeat Voldemort during that monologue when he dueled him—”  
  
“That’s all old news,” Angela said. “Of course you could write some of that into the book, and it would be a graceful retelling of a  _worn-out_  tale.” Draco glared at her; he hated being accused of unoriginality most of all. “But no one has ever managed to find out exactly  _how_  he learned what he had to do to defeat—You-Know-Who.” Unlike Draco, Angela had never managed the leap to calling Voldemort by his actual name. “It’s one of the greatest mysteries in the contemporary world. How did he  _know_  that he would survive the Killing Curse a second time? That the sacrifice he made for the people at the Battle of Hogwarts would protect them? Dumbledore was almost a year dead at that point, and all our sources agree that there was no contact between Potter and Snape before Snape died, either. No, there’s a mystery hiding in the Forbidden Forest and the memory of Harry Potter, and that’s what he’ll never tell anyone.”  
  
Draco could have purred. Angela was staring off into space now, her eyes wide and her voice rambling dreamily. The signs were excellent that he’d get a superb price for the book, if one person at Murray’s was already so interested in the plot. He congratulated his own business instincts before pressing onwards.  
  
“Angela, have you ever known me to leave a subject before I had the full details? Even the ones that are the most difficult to talk about, as in the details of rape or torture?”  
  
She came back to herself at the question and looked closely, critically, at him. “No,” she said. “But the people you talk to are usually less well-armored against you than Potter will be. Not only does he have those years of hating you to think about, but also the fact that everyone under the sun has tried to get this secret out of him before now. I don’t think your previous successes will make a difference here, Draco. I really don’t. In fact, if anything, they might tell against you. I’ve heard that Potter doesn’t like  _Heroic Lives_. Says it’s voyeurism.”  
  
“He’s just disappointed that he’s never seen himself in there.” Draco finished off his juice with a snap of his head. “By the time I’m finished with him, Angela, he’ll be begging to strip himself naked before me.”  
  
Angela closed her eyes. “Draco—”  
  
“In words, dearling, in words.” Draco raised his empty cup in a toast to her. “My letter is just the beginning. I also know how to listen, and to ask the right questions. If Potter hasn’t talked to anyone about this, that’s all the more sign that he must be inwardly  _dying_  to talk about it, right? Why shouldn’t I be the one he chooses? He’ll never encounter anyone more persistent or better fitted for the job than I am.”  
  
*  
  
 _Malfoy,  
  
No_.  
  
Draco spent some time staring at the letter that he’d received back from Potter. There could be no doubt that it was from Potter, despite the absence of a signature, because it had come back with Justice, and that was the last errand he had sent Justice on.  
  
Draco looked up at the owl, who was preening himself on the table after Draco had handed him a dead mouse. Justice flashed a yellow glance at him that reminded Draco of Yolanda’s, stood on one foot, paused significantly, and then switched over to preening the other wing.  
  
So many plans and inspirations would dissolve if he simply let this go, Draco thought, sliding his fingers along the top of the table where Potter’s note lay. Not to mention that he had all but promised Angela that this would be his next novel, and he hated going back on anything he’d said to his publishers. Murray’s had been good to him.  
  
Potter was used to dealing with people who rolled over and did as they were told. Or people who ignored him and went ahead and published anyway, Draco thought, thinking of Skeeter. She had any number of “exposés” on Potter that didn’t contain the slightest shred of truth, no matter how much she tried to get it.   
  
He hadn’t dealt with someone like Draco before: someone who was a good listener, a gentle coaxer, almost a Mind-Healer, and who combined that with the ruthless observation skills necessary to a novelist.  
  
Draco smiled and reached for his wand. There were many ways that he might try to get around Potter’s objections, including writing him other letters. That was what he did for most of his subjects who were initially reluctant to talk to him.  
  
With Potter, the direct approach was best.   
  
*  
  
“A word with you, Potter.”  
  
The man who’d been walking down the Ministry corridor ahead of Draco swung around. Draco had a glimpse of the familiar scar, the Auror robes, the too-narrow and too-tanned face—all the details that he’d expected.  
  
Then he caught his breath, because there was too much that was  _un_ familiar there, and which jolted him. The lack of glasses that made his green eyes stand out as though someone had lit a lightning flash behind them. The sharpening and smoothing of the angles in his face, so that he actually looked like an adult. The short cut to the dark hair, which tamed its messiness somewhat.  
  
And the  _intelligence_  behind his focused, concentrated gaze, which considered Draco as a threat and probed more deeply into his psychology than Draco liked.  
  
He’d let himself be taken off-guard too long. Potter said in a voice deeper than Draco remembered it, “There’s only one word that needs to matter to you, and that’s no,” then turned around again as if he were about to walk on.  
  
Draco leaped forwards and seized his arm. He was aware of people staring at him, some with hostility, but he’d experienced worse walking through hospital wards and funerals. At least these were people who probably realized he had less chance of doing harm to Potter than Potter did of doing harm to him, and they might even include some readers of his books.  
  
Potter spun back to him, made a little dancing step, and slid sideways. Suddenly Draco’s hand was empty. The next moment, he was pinned against the wall with Potter’s wand gently but firmly pressed to his windpipe.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d sink to assault, Malfoy.” Potter’s voice was gentle, but mocking for all that. “Of course, your books are an assault on most of what’s decent about society, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.” He pressed a little closer and lowered his voice to be for Draco’s ears alone. “I say that because they expect it of me. They know I don’t like parasites. Now, I don’t care if you publish intimate facts about anyone who’s agreed to it. But you won’t be publishing them about me. Why don’t you go away and make them up along with the rest of the good little writers feeding the public’s appetite for scandal?”  
  
It took Draco a long moment to catch his breath. He’d never interviewed an Auror or anyone else so involved in the physical careers before, and Potter’s strength impressed him as much as it surprised him. When he could finally speak, he locked his eyes with Potter’s and shook his head.   
  
“I’ve achieved too many successes,” he said. “And there’s a thrill when you know that you’ve chanced on the right story, like a golden arrow shooting up your spine. Much the same thing happens when you know you’re on the track of a criminal, I suspect. I can’t back out now, Potter.”  
  
Potter offered him a level gaze and a slow smile. “Then I’m sorry for you,” he said. He stepped away and let Draco escape from the wall. “You seem to have forgotten what disappointment’s like. Well, you’ll learn.” He again turned his back.  
  
“An evening of your time,” Draco said, brushing dust from his sleeves and making sure that his voice was perfectly pleasant. “We don’t have to talk about your experiences in the war the first time out. We can discuss something else less intimate. The latest case that you’ve been on, perhaps, or your correspondence.”  
  
Potter stopped as if Draco had fired off a Blasting Curse at him. For long moments, Draco had the feeling that he’d scored a point, but not why. Potter stood there, breathing evenly, still not looking at him.  
  
Finally, Potter snapped his head down and said, “One dinner. Tomorrow night at eight. Meet me in the Atrium.”  
  
When he moved away this time, an interested, excited murmur ran through the Aurors. A young woman in the bright robes of a trainee winked at Draco and mouthed, “Congratulations. That’s more than he’s ever given anyone else.”  
  
Draco winked back, exhilarated.  _No one resists the Malfoy charm, even if they’re determined to do it._    
  
The feeling of  _rightness_  settled further in his chest, unfurling wings like a dragon’s. Draco was more aware than ever that this was the right book to write.   
  
He didn’t know the title yet, but that title was waiting in him like a golden egg. It would hatch at the proper hour, probably when he’d sucked every last bit of information he could out of Potter.  
  
As he swaggered out of the Ministry, Draco whistled and ignored the odd, sometimes suspicious glances he got.  _I love my job._


	2. Immovable Object

Draco dressed carefully for his dinner with Potter, by  _not_  dressing carefully. He thought that Potter would appreciate a bit of fuzz and disorder.   
  
Accordingly, he combed most of his hair but not the ends, which had a tendency to curl up when not straightened, and chose a pair of robes he’d worn half a dozen times to the less elite literary lunches. They were blue, and Draco studied himself critically in the mirror, because they were really made for someone with bright golden hair and his mother’s blue eyes. But in the end, he decided to leave them. The whole goal was to get Potter to relax. He wouldn’t do that if Draco looked too perfect.  
  
He glanced at the clock. Still ten minutes before he had to leave, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to let more people than the Aurors who’d been witness to the altercation know about his triumph. He knelt down and cast a handful of Floo powder into the fire. “Angela Ellback’s office,” he called.  
  
Angela took a long moment to come to the fire, and when she did, she looked harassed, her hands covered with ink and feathers in her hair from what must have been several broken quills. She had a habit of snapping them and casting them over her shoulder when she was angry, Draco knew. “What is it, Draco?” she demanded when she saw him. “Did the proofs of  _Golden Stories_  not arrive on time?”  
  
“They did, and I’ve been working on them all day,” Draco reassured her.  _Golden Stories_  was a book of short tales he’d released based on people who either had a minor role in the war or hadn’t given him permission to publish everything. “But I had something else to tell you. I’m having dinner with Potter tonight.”  
  
Angela folded her arms and gave him an unimpressed look. “Lots of people can say the same thing. What makes you so special?”  
  
“Well, for one thing,” Draco said, rubbing his fingers up his arm and peering coyly at her from under his lashes, “he refused at first, and then gave in. Does that sound as if he intends to keep his secrets all to himself?”  
  
Angela blinked a bit. “Well, it’s unusual,” she conceded. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll get anything out of him. I’ll be more impressed when you have evidence of what happened to him before he walked into that Forest.”  
  
“I’ll get it, don’t worry,” Draco said. He felt stung for a moment, and then he felt the urge to laugh. This was why he liked Angela, after all—because to her he was a writer and not a celebrity, and thus the editor’s lawful prey to be chivvied along, slapped, and bitten back into place. “Maybe not tonight, but how many interviews has it taken me in the past?”  
  
“Five,” Angela said instantly. “That was with Ollivander.”  
  
“And my family held Ollivander prisoner. I never personally did anything to Potter during the war.” Draco cast a glance at the clock and stood quickly. He would have to leave now if he didn’t want to run late.   
  
“He might remember the time  _before_  the war, when it sounds as if you did nothing but go after him personally,” Angela pointed out.  
  
Draco gave her a small smile. “Then I’ll just have to see to it that he has reason to admire the strides I’ve made since then, won’t I?”  
  
He shut down the Floo call before Angela could retort. There were certain times the editor’s lawful prey needed a bit of revenge.  
  
*  
  
“Malfoy.” Potter inclined his head to him, not smiling. “Welcome. Where do you want to go for dinner?”  
  
Draco paused to study Potter. His face was stern, as if he had told all possible smiles and grins to go home for the evening, he wouldn’t require them. His eyes looked almost hunted. Someone had been hiring shadows to plague him, Draco thought—or maybe that was only the normal way for an Auror to look. He did know that Potter was hideously overworked, even by the standards of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, if half the stories about what he’d accomplished in the last few years were true.  
  
“I want to go to a place where you’ll relax,” Draco said bluntly.  _I’ll never get anything out of him if he’s like this_. “I don’t know which kind of place that would be, because I don’t know much about you. I hope to change that, of course, but for now, why don’t you choose?”  
  
That earned him an instant suspicious look. Draco withstood it easily, and studied Potter right back. Yes, he held his shoulders tense and now and then darted glances into the corners. Draco thought that was more than the simple paranoia of Aurors; he’d interviewed a few other war heroes whose fears had remained with them, and some of them had acted like this.  
  
Potter spent a minute more peering at him. Then his mouth curved up into a smile, and he nodded. “Charming little bastard, aren’t you, Malfoy?”  
  
“I do try to suit my behavior to my client’s mood,” Draco said, and extended an arm. Potter looked at him again, but this time as if he didn’t understand what the arm was for, and Draco smiled a bit. “You look as though you could use some support.”  
  
Again Potter froze as if Draco had somehow scored a conversational point off him, and spent some time twitching. Draco gazed back at him with his blandest expression, but inwardly he snarled at himself.  _What will get him to open up to me? It’s all very well surprising him, but I don’t know how I’m doing that!_  
  
“I could, but not that way.” Potter shook his head and flicked his fringe from his eyes with a snap of his fingers. It looked like a habitual gesture. Draco wondered why he simply didn’t get the fringe cut, but it wasn’t his business to ask that—right now. “All right. Let’s go to the Fire-Room.”  
  
Draco blinked. The Fire-Room was one of the more expensive new restaurants in Hogsmeade, and a place he usually took friends rather than subjects.  
  
But Potter looked as if he meant it, so Draco nodded and stepped up to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Potter strode quickly across the Ministry Atrium, his head up and his steps short and tense. Draco matched him with hardly a thought, and then spent the walk studying his profile.   
  
Usually, he began his notes with a description of the war hero he was interviewing, so that he could start thinking about how he would describe the fictional character based on that person. He’d never had to idealize someone as distinct as Potter, though. How could one leave any of the details out? The sharp green eyes  _had_  to be there, the angled jaw-line, the messy dark hair, the lightning bolt scar.  
  
Well, that didn’t mean he couldn’t combine reality and idealization. He’d done it, especially for Selene in  _The Hope-Well_. What if his hero had messy hair, but blond? What if he had a scar that was a different shape, and in a different place, perhaps on his cheek? Then he could earn some readerly sympathy and interest from the beginning, as they wondered about how that scar had affected his chances of being considered handsome.  
  
Draco constructed the picture in his mind and laid it carefully over the face of the striding Potter.  
  
Something strange happened. The mask melted away completely instead of adjusting itself. Draco blinked. It was as if Potter’s face were some kind of magnifying lens that focused sunlight to burn his harmless fantasy.  
  
 _Or maybe the reality is simply too intense, and my experience with it too extensive, to permit me to transform it so easily._  
  
Potter paused and turned to stare at him as they reached one of the fireplaces. “Do you always look at everyone you try to interview as though you wanted to devour them?” he asked.  
  
Draco smiled gently. Many people didn’t notice the way he looked at them, and he was especially out of practice because Luna Lovegood didn’t notice most stares. He would have to remember that Potter was a trained Auror, though.  
  
“Not everyone,” he admitted. “Some people have the oddest bones that would stick in my throat, and you can’t  _imagine_  what the taste of someone who doesn’t bathe is like, even going in through the eyes.” He gave a theatrical shiver.  
  
Potter went on staring at him for a few moments. Draco looked back, retaining his faint smile. How Potter responded to this, one of his first sallies, would determine a lot about how Draco tried to relate to him at the dinner.  
  
Then Potter smiled in return. It was a small expression, so fleeting Draco might have missed it if he’d been looking the other way and had to turn back to Potter. And Potter did whirl around and cast Floo powder into the fire in the next instant as if he wanted to conceal it.  
  
But no matter. Draco had seen it.  
  
 _Score another victory for the Malfoy charm_ , he thought happily as Potter shouted out “The Fire-Room!” and Draco followed right behind him.  _Is there anyone it can’t convert?_  
  
*  
  
Potter with good food inside him and the promise of more to come was a different person entirely.  
  
Of course, Draco did wonder if part of that was because they were sitting at a table where Potter could have his back to the wall, and so he felt  _able_  to relax and stop looking around for danger as he didn’t in a more open area. But he could be generous when he wanted, and so he simply put the reflection in his mental file of notes for the character based on Potter, instead of speaking it aloud.  
  
Potter ate with more gusto than Draco had seen in a long time; he sometimes wondered if there was a rule that said editors, writers, and war survivors weren’t allowed to enjoy food anymore. Potter would take a bite of the chicken smothered in orange sauce that the server brought them and sit with it in his mouth for a time before he swallowed it and sighed luxuriously around it. Then he would begin on the plate of honey and bread, followed by the plate of mixed fruits and vegetables and a swallow of the decidedly Muggle beer he’d asked for and which the Fire-Room turned out to be able to provide, before he worked his way back around to the chicken.   
  
He never licked his fingers, and not often his lips—apparently the Aurors had taught him that much—but he might as well have. He couldn’t have shown his pleasure in stronger terms.  
  
Draco picked at his own meal, wishing to have his mouth free to ask Potter questions. But since Potter’s mouth was never free to answer them, in the end he gave up and ate his own salmon with more attention than he’d given a dinner in months.  
  
When he finished, which was well before Potter, he leaned back in his chair and looked around. The Fire-Room had the appearance almost of a cave, if caves could be paneled in wood so highly polished it gave forth blurred reflections. The ceiling was low and also made entirely of wood, the fireplace ringed with rough stones, lanterns and lamps hanging so far down in many places that the taller patrons regularly had to duck. Bronze mirrors enclosed the doors to the kitchen, supposedly the only touch of luxury in the place.  
  
Draco knew better. It was the Fire-Room’s boast that it knew how to make roughness comfortable and beautiful, and it did that well.  
  
Draco had assumed Potter would be more comfortable in a pub, though, and he directed his gaze back to his dining companion curiously. Potter was leaning back in his chair, shoulders pressed securely to the wood, swallowing the last of his beer from a heavy pewter tankard. When he put it down and closed his eyes, arching his neck, the last of the shadows seemed to melt from his face.  
  
And a pulse of attraction rang through Draco like someone had banged on a drum located in his chest.  
  
He shifted in surprise and cleared his throat without meaning to. At once Potter’s eyes flickered open, but they were softly hazy with relaxation, and he smiled and nodded at Draco as if they were friends who regularly ate together.  
  
“So have you decided what kind of meal I’d make for you yet?” Potter asked, lifting his tankard. One of the servers on the other side of the room noticed and nodded. Potter set the tankard back down and stretched again, thus proving that he’d also learned some patience since Hogwarts. “Bony or sharp or smooth?”  
  
It took Draco a moment to remember his own joke back at the Ministry, since his mind had taken the notions of Potter and eating in a rather different direction. He cleared his throat again. “A difficult meal,” he said. “Difficult to judge, I mean.”  
  
Potter laced his fingers together beneath his chin and snorted slightly, his eyes bright. “Not many people have said  _that_. Most of them know what they think of me even before they meet me.”  
  
Draco seized the chance that those words offered, and leaned confidently forwards. “I might have thought that,” he whispered. “I  _did_  think that. But I had to reconsider when I saw you yesterday, and then again today.”  
  
Potter tensed a little, probably because he was remembering why Draco had wanted to talk to him in the first place, but then cocked his head curiously. “So how did I change your mind? I don’t like acting, so I’m not trying to charm you.”  
  
Draco restrained his amusement at the notion that acting and charming someone were the same thing, and at the idea that Potter could ever be charming. He had some proof that the last was true, after all.   
  
“I saw some intelligence in your eyes that I hadn’t expected to see there,” he said. He needed the truth for right now, because he thought the truth was important to Potter, and this was a man who might well detect him in a lie.  
  
Potter threw back his head and laughed. Small crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes when he did so. Draco stared, fascinated.  _That_  wasn’t something he had anticipated either, probably because Potter had been sniggering into his hand over some stupid joke on Slytherin most of the times that Draco had seen him laugh.  
  
 _You should have grown beyond Hogwarts_ , he reminded himself.  _You’ve been aware of Potter as someone other than a student for years, even if most of what you were aware of was lies made up to sell newspapers._  
  
He found himself  _aware_  of Potter in other ways, too, as the man lowered his head and looked at him with brilliant amusement. His face made every emotion appear more vivid than usual, Draco thought absently. It must be those eyes. “Well, come to think of that, you surprised me too, Malfoy,” Potter drawled. “You don’t look as rat-like as I expected someone who feeds on other people’s lives to look.”  
  
“Let me guess,” Draco said, keeping his voice amused so that Potter couldn’t see his bristling. “You don’t like newspaper reporters, either.”  
  
“Not especially,” Potter admitted. “I’ve learned not to read what they say about me. It only makes me upset. But there’s a freedom in the press that I can’t squelch unless they actually libel me, and I know that. Whereas  _your_  books are a different matter.” He nodded in thanks as the server filled his tankard with beer again and leaned back in his chair, staring at Draco from under lowered lashes. “Tell me, Malfoy, why did you want to write these kinds of books in the first place?”  
  
“Because it’s what I’m good at,” Draco said simply. “Why did you want to be an Auror?”  
  
Potter’s lips curved up in a small, sly smile. “Somehow, I don’t think talk of a driving moral purpose to protect the wizarding world would make much sense to you.”  
  
“But it has to make sense,” Draco said.  _An opening at last_. He turned his hands upwards on the table, a classic gesture of innocence that Selene had used in  _The Hope-Well_  and which he hoped would appeal to Potter. “How else am I going to write a character based on you, if I don’t understand your deepest principles?”  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. “And  _that’s_  what I don’t understand, Malfoy. Why do you have to base your characters on real people? Is it a failure of imagination? Why not just make up people out of a conglomeration of details from different ones?”  
  
“Because that’s not the way my creativity works,” Draco said. “I might as well ask you why you didn’t become a private dueling instructor, the way so many people clamored for you to be, or Defense professor at Hogwarts. I know that Longbottom offered the position to you.”  
  
Potter paused and gave him another thoughtful glance. Draco relaxed a bit. It wasn’t often that he was so open to his clients. Most of the time, he tried to present an abject front, particularly if they were ones he had wronged personally, or simply a sympathetic one, portraying himself as a safe way to tell their stories to the world without going through the trouble and danger of public appearances. But in Potter’s case, being honest and stressing the similarities between them seemed most effective.  
  
“I can understand that,” Potter murmured. “Still, I think you’ll be best served by making up the details, or getting them from biographies, because you won’t get them from me.” He said it with such a gentle smile that Draco might have been fooled by how absolute a rejection it was, except that he had learned to pay attention to tone.  
  
“I don’t want to go around you,” Draco said. “I want to get inside you—”  
  
Potter choked on his beer. Then he put the tankard down on the table and leaned back to give a long, whistling bark of laughter, loud enough to cause some of the people in the Fire-Room to look around. “Well,” Potter said, when he could get his breath under control, “that’s definitely the most direct proposition I’ve ever received.”  
  
Draco managed to laugh himself. He really should have been more careful with his words, since he made a living with them. That one wasn’t Potter’s fault.  
  
 _Though other things will be, if he doesn’t start letting me a little more into his head. He’s so opaque at the moment that I might as well be trying to write a story about that bloke Lovegood dated for a while._  
  
“I meant,” Draco said, when he thought enough time had passed and Potter’s merriment had subsided, “that of course I wouldn’t write the book without your permission, and without your compliance. Several interviews are often necessary to work out all the details. In your case, I’ll need a lot of them. I might even write two books.”  
  
This was the part of the conversation where people often started darting him fascinated looks, intoxicated despite themselves with the thought of being the subject of a book. Potter only sighed. Of course, he would have appeared in many books, Draco reminded himself, to counter his immediate offense at the sound.   
  
“Malfoy,” Potter said, “I’ll be willing to give you the same details that I’ve given everyone else. From there, you could work out quite a bit and create a good story, I suppose. But I won’t give you what I haven’t given everybody else.” He raised a hand when Draco opened his mouth. “It’s nothing personal. I just decided that there were boundary lines of privacy I wasn’t willing to go beyond quite some time ago, that’s all.”  
  
“But I still want to know why,” Draco breathed, leaning forwards and attempting to make himself look both attractive and pathetic.  _What do I care if he regards me with some pity and more contempt? I would still have what I want from him, and that’s what’s important_. “Why keep part of your life all to yourself? Of course, you wouldn’t want someone like Skeeter to take over the task of reporting it, but if you had someone you could trust, someone who would give it its fairest form in a book—”  
  
“Why  _wouldn’t_  I want to keep it all to myself?” Potter blinked at him. “Sharing the life I’ve lived isn’t my most important goal, Malfoy.”  
  
Draco swallowed before he could let out the words he wanted to let out.  _But silence is death_. He couldn’t expect Potter to see it that way. Potter was an Auror, living in the Ministry, home of government secrets. Of course he would assume that there were some circumstances where communication wasn’t essential.  
  
“But I would only use the details that you give me permission to use,” he murmured at last. Perhaps it was time to use the same card he had used with Lovegood and other people reluctant to hand their stories over to the public because it would have meant effort for them. “Think of how much it would improve the public’s understanding of you. And all without your having to make speeches or give more interviews! Really, if these books do as well as I think they will, then you shouldn’t have to give an interview ever again.”  
  
Potter stared at him with softened eyes. Draco held his breath, certain he was about to get the truth at last.  
  
Then Potter shook his head. “You’re eloquent,” he said. “Of course, you would have to be, wouldn’t you? But no, Malfoy, I’m still not convinced. There’s no  _reason_  for it.   
  
“I’m essentially a private person. I don’t want to broadcast every detail of my life to the public because they’ve taken so much from me already. There are things I’d like to keep to myself.” He looked calmly at Draco, his eyes bright. “Surely you can understand that. Surely you wouldn’t want someone to turn your head inside out, either, and expose others to all your darkest secrets.”  
  
Draco leaned his head in his hand and looked for a long time at Potter. He had learned something important about him with that last admission, which he didn’t think was one Potter made to every random person wanting to profit from his image, but it still wasn’t enough.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I want everything. That doesn’t mean I’ll  _publicize_  everything,” he added quickly, when Potter’s face darkened. “But I have to know everything so I can decide what’s important and what’s not.”  
  
Potter sighed. “Then I’m sorry for you. You won’t get what you want.” He turned and started to look about for a server again.  
  
Draco leaned back in his chair. There had to be a way to work through the cracks in Potter’s defenses—and there had to be cracks because no defense was perfect. He just had to find them. At the moment, though, he couldn’t think of any, because Potter had what sounded like reasonable reasons to refuse Draco, which meant that he wouldn’t be fighting against a conviction of his own irrationality.  
  
His thoughts were distracted by a bright golden owl which swooped through one of the Fire-Room’s windows and straight towards Potter. Potter’s face went ashen, but he lifted a hand to receive it. When he opened the letter inside and read it—a single sheet of paper, Draco noted—he closed his eyes and bowed his head. The look on his face was terrible, as if he’d just heard news of a friend dying.  
  
 _That was why he reacted the way he did yesterday and agreed to this dinner_ , Draco realized suddenly.  _Because I mentioned something about his correspondence._    
  
“Potter, are you all right?” Draco asked. His curiosity was vibrating. Was Potter getting threatening letters? It would make sense, given his position in the Ministry, but that didn’t explain his look. That wasn’t fear on his face. It was horror.  
  
Potter started and then looked up at him. His eyes were hard suddenly, remote.   
  
“Malfoy,” he said, “you’ll do me the greatest kindness you can by going away and forgetting that you saw this.”  
  
Draco rose at once to his feet and leaned across the table to squeeze Potter’s shoulder. Potter had already folded the letter, so that he couldn’t see the contents. Draco didn’t try to look, instead keeping his eyes firmly locked on Potter’s face.  
  
“You’re asking me for something impossible,” he said. “But I’ll try to be as gentle as I can.”  
  
He turned and made his way out of the Fire-Room, only glancing back once, when he was near the door. Potter was staring at him, a look of mixed anger and dislike and irritation on his face.  
  
 _That look_ , Draco thought.  _Begin with that look. If I can fashion a character who can look like that, it won’t matter if his face is different._


	3. Irritated Parents

“Draco. How wonderful to see you.”  
  
Draco smiled and leaned in to kiss his mother on the cheek. She looked wonderful as always, with a white shawl around her shoulders and her hair combed to hang in a long, straight sheet of blonde silk over the shawl. Her robes underneath that were blue, the sort of sky-blue that Draco always described in Quidditch scenes. He hadn’t liked playing in the rain when he still played; why should he inflict that on his characters? Unless he was irritated with them, of course, or needed the rain for a plot point. Everything in his novels ultimately bent to serve the needs of the story.  
  
“I heard that you have been seen with Potter,” Narcissa murmured, holding out her arm so that Draco could escort her into the dining room. “Tell me, Draco, is your interest in him political or predatory?”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes at an angle so that his mother couldn’t see him rolling them. She still knew it was happening, of course, and smiled at him with perfect serenity.   
  
“Neither,” Draco said. “It’s novelistic. His story has never been told in the way that I would tell it, and I’m trying to get permission from him to tell it.” He tilted his head speculatively; he’d come to the Manor just to have dinner with his parents, but he remembered something now that might help him with the Potter books. “You saved his life in the Forbidden Forest, didn’t you, Mother?”  
  
“I was not the reason he survived the Killing Curse,” Narcissa said, a prim undertone in her voice. She expected Draco to know more about the workings of magical theory than that. “I have no more idea about why that happened than anyone else.”  
  
“I know, but you lied to Voldemort for him.” Draco smiled temptingly at her. “Tell me the story again after dinner? I need to know the way Potter looked when he walked into the Forbidden Forest, how long it was between the time he supposedly died and the moment when Voldemort ordered you to go to him—everything.”  
  
“I will try to remember.” The primness was more pronounced than before. Of course, that was almost all reporters had wanted to interview his mother about after the war, how she had rescued Harry Potter.  
  
Draco ignored the warning tone. He could get away with outrages that no reporter could. His parents did not always like what he did, but they tolerated it.  
  
They knew how close all of them had come to having no family left to tolerate.  
  
He swept Narcissa through the doors, decorated with gold and silver inlay, into the wide dining room where Voldemort had so often sat and held strategy sessions. It had taken Draco some time to conquer his bad memories of this place, including the way Voldemort had fed his snake on helpless prisoners, but he had been determined to do it, as had his parents. This was  _their_  home, and they would not give it up to nightmares.  
  
His father was sitting at the head of the dining table, consulting his heavily jeweled watch with an air of impatience. He rose to his feet when he saw them. “You are late,” he said sternly to Narcissa, the way he always did.  
  
Narcissa held her head high, the way she always did, and gave him a cool sigh. “Perhaps you should get a better watch,” she said.  
  
“Or a better wife.” Lucius rounded the end of the table, moving towards her with a quick stride. Draco stepped smoothly away from his mother as she lifted her hands. She hardly pushed against Lucius’s chest, but he stopped as though he had run into one of the walls of the dining room.  
  
“Could you find one as beautiful as I am?” Narcissa asked, and tossed her head so that light ran and rippled through her hair. “Or one who kisses as well?” She rose on her toes and pressed her lips to Lucius’s.  
  
Draco looked away with his face flaming. It was no use protesting, because they  _would_  do this; the most he could do was not look.  
  
“Perhaps not,” Lucius grumbled as they parted. “But make sure that you’re not late again.”  
  
“I’ll buy you a better watch for your birthday,” said Narcissa, in the voice of someone who has to put up with enormous trials. Draco heard the rustle of cloth as she linked her arm with his father’s, and he finally felt safe to turn back.  
  
They shone as they stood beside each other, both in white robes, both blond—though Lucius’s hair was paler than Narcissa’s—both tall and pale and slender. Draco felt a deep tug of pride and love and envy move through him. He doubted he would ever find someone he looked as well beside as his parents looked beside each other.  
  
He knew the problem was his own imagination. He had been hearing and constructing the story of his parents all his life. He knew how well they suited each other, and, in the war, what they had risked to stay together. He wanted someone who could partner him with the same kind of depth. He wanted to live a romance.  
  
But true romances were rare, and Draco doubted that he would be fortunate enough to walk into one.  
  
“Come and sit down, dear,” said Narcissa.  
  
Draco gave her a grateful smile. Romances were rare, but family histories weren’t, and Draco was glad that he lived in a family like this one instead of the tangled families that Denise Bellanthe was forever describing in her long historicals, where everyone had hidden siblings and murderous feuds with half their relatives.  
  
 _For that matter_ , he thought, as he moved forwards to take the seat beside his father, to the immediate left of the head of the table,  _there are some people who have almost no family history at all._  
  
He wondered if Potter felt left out when he looked at the Weasleys, with their crowd of family members, or the Blacks, with their long history, or even his own godson Teddy Lupin, who had a grandmother who could tell him tales of his parents. It wasn’t the lack of physical bodies that would be so bad, Draco thought, but the lack of  _stories_. He’d read the same biographies everyone else had; he knew that Potter had grown up with Muggles who told him nothing about his parents, that he hadn’t known he was a wizard until he was eleven years old. That was a long, long time to be without an origin story.  
  
 _Is that the reason he’s never married? Because he’s been without a story for so long it would seem strange to him to start one?_  
  
“Draco, please pass the salt,” Narcissa said, in the tone that meant she had asked him the same thing three times and was beginning to let the discrepancy between her question and his response tell on her nerves.  
  
Draco started, hastily passed the salt, and gave her an apologetic smile. Then he sank back into wondering and dreaming about Potter. His parents conversed with each other, as always, and only occasionally asked him a question. Among the things they politely tolerated was his career. As Lucius said,  _he_  could not understand the tendency to communicate so often, but at least it was not working for a living.  
  
 _Does Potter think the same thing? That this isn’t really work? Is that why he told me to just make something up?_  
  
Draco smiled a moment later.  _Well, he and Lucius are right in one sense. It isn’t work in the fashion of industry. It’s art._  
  
*  
  
“I’m not sure how well I can remember, Draco. It was sixteen years ago, after all.”  
  
Draco snorted and tapped his finger against his wineglass, making it ring. “You’re no older than this crystal, Mother, and you can produce many sounds finer.”  
  
Narcissa lowered her lashes with a pleased smile. She was sitting opposite him in a comfortable chair in the Small White Room, which she had chosen because it made the firelight complement her hair and cast a deep shine on her white robes. Lucius had sat with them for a short time, but business had called him away to his aviary. Draco had taken the opportunity to get in a few jabs. If his father could not imagine Draco as a novelist, Draco had a hard time imagining his father as a pigeon fancier.  
  
“Well,” Narcissa said, in a slow, reflective tone like sliding water, “Potter made no attempt to defend himself, I can tell you that. He simply stood in front of the Dark Lord and fell over when the Killing Curse hit him.”  
  
“Voldemort,” Draco said insistently. He thought it ridiculous that, so long after the war and the final demise of the bastard, his parents went on granting Voldemort a title.  
  
His mother flashed him an unexpectedly sharp glance, which made Draco wince like poison applied to the nerves. “We endured more from him than you did,” she said. “We felt his power. And we lived longer in the midst of Dark magic. Permit us a sign of what is caution, instead of fear.”  
  
Draco lowered his eyes and nodded, fighting the blush that he could feel forming. He hated disappointing his mother, and it wasn’t the most intelligent thing to do when he needed her to tell the story of what had happened in the Forest.  
  
“He fell over,” Narcissa continued. “The Dark Lord made a speech that I haven’t bothered remembering, about triumph and how he had finally defeated his nemesis and a lot of other nonsense. Then he sent me to check on Potter. I knew the moment I knelt over him that he was breathing.”  
  
“But you didn’t actually see the moment when he returned to life?” Draco demanded. He was a bit disappointed. He had thought  _someone_  must have, but it looked as though that ultimate secret remained locked tight in Potter’s hands and heart.  
  
 _I must convince him to open them_.  
  
“No,” Narcissa said. “For all I knew, he might never have stopped breathing at all, or started doing it again a moment after his body hit the ground. I asked him what had become of you, and he told me that you were alive. That was when I decided that I would lie to the Dark Lord.” She shook her head slightly and looked away, one hand tightening sharply in her hair.  
  
Draco sat still. He knew this was the bravest thing his mother had ever done in her life, and he could be silent in respect for it.  
  
“And from there,” Narcissa said simply, “you know what happened. The Dark Lord commanded the half-giant to carry Potter back to the school, and then he revealed he was alive and defeated the Dark Lord.”  
  
“What exactly made you decide to lie?” Draco asked, a question he had never felt able to ask before because they were still too close to the event. “You could have taken the information about me from him and told the Dark Lord the truth.”  
  
“I had seen enough torture,” Narcissa said. “I did not think the Dark Lord would leave you alive for long after he killed Potter, whilst there was at least the chance that Potter would. And—” She paused, shaking her head.  
  
Draco leaned forwards. He knew moments like this. Lovegood had had them, and Longbottom, and Granger. In these hesitations and silences was the meat of the story. “What was the final deciding factor?”  
  
“The expression on Potter’s face when he came walking into the clearing,” Narcissa said. “He didn’t expect to survive, Draco, no matter what he may have said later. He thought the Dark Lord would kill him, and he came walking to face his fate anyway. I couldn’t take away his chance to live after that display of courage.”  
  
Draco gave a slow nod. That might have been something he had  _heard_  before, but to have confirmation made all the difference. The shadows of a story were stirring in his mind.  
  
“I can write about a hero like him,” he murmured. “Or at least I can try, if he’ll just  _yield_  and give me the story.”  
  
Narcissa rose abruptly to her feet. “I did not realize that you were this intent on writing a novel about Potter, Draco,” she said. “Do you intend to force him?”  
  
Draco blinked at her. “How can I force him, when he has more magic than I do and a higher reputation? Of course not. I simply want to persuade him to give me the story, so that I can tell it.” He could feel a yearning in himself when he spoke those last words. Maybe “private” people like Potter and “secretive” people like his parents didn’t understand why Draco needed to tell stories, but at bottom it was to fulfill this yearning that coiled in him like a hungry viper.  
  
Narcissa narrowed her eyes. “He saved you, Draco,” she said. “He saved you by saving himself, and he did that by telling me the truth. Not to mention the way he saved your life during the battle.”  
  
Draco stared at her in puzzlement. “I know that. Why did you think I wanted to hear the story again?” He tried a smile, but in the face of his mother’s penetrating stare, he dropped it. She would have looked exactly like a hawk if her eyes were ringed with gold, he thought. “Mother, what is it?”  
  
“He’s done enough,” Narcissa said, with a quiet force that Draco hadn’t heard her use since he was five years old. “I don’t think he needs you pursuing him for a story that he must have decided to leave buried.”  
  
Draco folded his arms. In spite of himself, he could feel the blood rising to his face and his skin prickling with discomfort. “Mother, I  _need_  to tell this story. It’s the right one to tell. You don’t know what that’s like.”  
  
“I don’t know exactly what Potter’s situation in the wizarding world is like, either,” Narcissa said, “but I can imagine. And I know that my imagination walks more easily with him than with you.”  
  
She turned and left the room. Draco collapsed back into the chair and frowned at the fire, torn between wondering when his mother had become Potter’s defender and trying to decide what kind of character would use the words she had just spoken, which he liked.  
  
*  
  
“Look, Malfoy, just because I cooperated with you once before doesn’t mean I’ll trap Harry into talking to you.”  
  
“I don’t want to  _trap_  him,” Draco said, frustrated beyond belief. “I want him to agree freely to give me the story. But it’s hard when he’s apparently ordered the Aurors to stand around him in a wall. Look, will you just carry a message to him?”  
  
Granger cocked her head meditatively. She sat behind her huge desk completely at her ease, small though the office around the desk was. The Ministry’s latest tactic to discourage her was apparently to give her a small office and hope she would drive herself mad with claustrophobia. Draco didn’t think it would work. Granger was a brilliant lawyer, and she would go right on reforming the laws that dealt with centaurs, vampires, house-elves, merfolk, and other magical creatures. The Ministry tried to pretend those attempts—and the changes to law she actually made—didn’t exist, while using Granger’s talents to convict wizards who committed horrible abuses even they couldn’t ignore. Draco thought they would regret it when they turned around and found Granger was Minister someday.  
  
“But I don’t see any reason to do that,” Granger said. “If Harry doesn’t want to talk to you, he shouldn’t have to.”  
  
Draco took a deep breath. She was a lawyer, so he would try an appeal to logic. “You were happy with the way your novel turned out, weren’t you?” She should be; her novel,  _Fire in the Darkness_ , had been the hardest to write, and also a bestseller. Granger gave him a tiny, private smirk, as if she was remembering that.  
  
To this day, she was the only one of Draco’s subjects who had insisted that she receive ten percent of the profits from the book about her.  
  
“I’m not the same person as Harry,” Granger said. “It was difficult enough for you to subdue your prejudices and preconceptions when it came to me. How in the world are you going to work with him, when you hated him so much?”  
  
“I didn’t  _hate_  him,” Draco said. Granger folded her arms and raised an eyebrow, declaring that he was lying without a word. “I disliked him greatly,” Draco continued, because he should know the truths of his own soul better than Granger did. “But we’re adults now, and I have no reason to dislike him since the war. He hasn’t tried to embarrass me, or harass me, or force me to fulfill the life-debts. Why does everyone assume I’ll do such a terrible job?”  
  
“I don’t know about  _everyone_ ,” said Granger, with that fussy precision that Draco had had to tone down so much in Astraea Millhouse, the character based on her, “but I know why I assume that. I can explain, if you’d like.”  
  
Draco spent some moments gazing at her, trying to allow his empathy to reach into her head and pull out the answer, but Granger’s mind was frustratingly opaque to him. Draco reckoned he really shouldn’t be surprised. It was several years since he had written  _Fire in the Darkness_ , and he had shrugged off the harness of Astraea’s mind as soon as he could, relieved at being able to do some softer thinking.  
  
He must have scowled or nodded or given some sign that he wanted Granger’s “expert” opinion, because she spoke in an exceptionally dry voice. “You sensationalize things, Malfoy. You play up the dramatic aspects of the lives you write about, and skip over the ones that you think are less important. But Harry’s been exposed to so many ‘big events’ that he’s numb to them by now. You won’t be able to write about him in any truthful manner unless you can write about the small things. And I already know that you can’t write about the small things.”  
  
Draco gritted his teeth. Simply because he had left Astraea single at the end of the book instead of trying to describe her unusual marriage arrangements with the character based on Weasley—“I could try it.”  
  
“But you wouldn’t succeed.” Granger picked up one of the scrolls lying on her desk and bent her face over it, her words muffled by the angle of her head. “That’s why you would be so terrible. Somewhere out there might be Harry’s perfect biographer, or even the person who could perfectly turn Harry’s life into a novel without betraying who he was, but you’re not her.”  
  
Draco went on staring at her for some time. She never looked up. Granger could ignore people more thoroughly than anyone Draco had ever met, with the single exception of his mother.  
  
Finally he stood and left the office, turning up the corridor with a scowl that he made no effort to hide. His reputation didn’t rise and fall by the expression on his face, like an actor’s. His life was his words.  
  
 _And I said that I was the best person to write this novel. Did I mean that, or was it only the kind of protest I automatically make when I’m told that I can’t do something?_    
  
Draco paused, new thoughts whirling and buzzing through his head like a tornado of fleas.  
  
 _I said that I want this to happen. It doesn’t look as though Potter or Potter’s friends will talk to me, and even my own mother warned me to leave him alone. There’s doubt on every side, and I can’t possibly respond to that by simply letting it go. I have to show them I’m the best writer no matter what, and that means serving the story.  
  
No matter what._  
  
Draco licked his lips and shot a nervous glance up and down the corridor. At the moment, it was bereft of people. It was nearly noon, and most people in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement seized that hour to go eat lunch. Potter was among them, as Draco knew very well. His movements had been reported carefully enough in the latest newspaper articles, after all, and Draco had no reason to think that they had changed. A change would have been newsworthy enough to merit an announcement.  
  
That meant that neither Potter nor his partner were likely to be in Potter’s office right now. And  _that_  meant that Draco might be able to learn something from investigating Potter’s office, if he was clever and lucky.  
  
 _And swift_ , he added to himself, looking at his watch. He would have to keep a sharp eye on the time, since he was sure that he could spend literally hours investigating Potter’s secrets.  
  
It was easy enough to look as if he belonged in the department, or at least had business there. Draco fastened the slightly bored, slightly harassed expression that most people got when summoned to the Ministry on his face, and strode along, now and then checking his watch and sighing. No one asked where he was going or if he needed help, probably glad to escape the necessity of dealing with him by fleeing to lunch.  
  
 _Now, whether I can enter his office depends on what sort of celebrity Potter is._  
  
Luckily, Potter turned out to be the right sort of celebrity—that is, the kind who had become comfortable in his environment and trusted to other people to provide protection for him, instead of locks and wards. Draco had the wards that  _did_  exist on Potter’s office door undone in a few seconds. There were advantages to having parents who considered the kind of magic taught by Hogwarts extremely limited.  
  
He stepped into the room and made a face at the mess scattered across the two desks.  _In fairness, I will assume that most of this is Weasley’s._  
  
He chose a desk at random, thanks to the large photograph of Potter with his two best friends on top of it, and smiled when he realized that most of the reports sprawled across it before the familiar messy signature.  _I_  am  _clever._  
  
Since he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for and the slightest thing might be valuable, he picked up the first packet of papers and flicked through them. Reports on cases, dry statistical reports, new files—  
  
 _What’s this?_  
  
It was a small, folded piece of paper, which had slipped out of some deep cranny no doubt meant to conceal it. Draco picked it up and unfolded it with lively curiosity. It had no salutation and no signature, so he concentrated on the first paragraph.  _Maybe this is one of Potter’s mysterious letters._    
  
It certainly seemed so. The writing was neat and in capital letters, to make it harder to trace, and the first line made Draco’s eyebrows rise.  _I KNOW THAT YOU’RE SEEING THINGS NO ONE ELSE CAN SEE, POTTER.  
  
“MALFOY!”_  
  
Badly startled, Draco dropped the letter and the stack of paper on top of it. He hoped that the scatter of various different parchments would hide what he had been looking at.  
  
When he glanced up and met Potter’s furious eyes and drawn wand, he realized that that might not matter. He was in trouble whether that was revealed or not.  
  
“I told you to  _leave me alone_ ,” Potter growled. “And instead you look through my private papers?” He laughed darkly. “Of course, I should have remembered. Privacy means nothing to you. Otherwise you would leave people decently alone instead of picking through the wreckage of their worst memories looking to fatten yourself on the carrion. Scavenger.”  
  
Draco drew his breath to defend himself. Potter’s eyes became the color of jade, and he gestured sharply with his wand. Draco’s tongue literally tied itself in knots.  
  
“Get out of here,” Potter said, a visible glow of magic spreading out like a heat haze around him. “You make me  _sick_.”  
  
Draco didn’t remember clearly how he got out of the room—only that he stood on the street in front of the Ministry a short time later, shuddering, with the ache in his tongue a match for the ringing shame in his brain.  
  
And the raging curiosity that the letter had roused and that all Potter’s anger could not quench.


	4. Ire

_That was stupid_.   
  
Draco sighed and rolled over in his bed, staring at the ceiling and scowling as he lightly kicked at the sheets with one foot.  _I know that. I don’t need my own brain telling me the same thing over and over again. I’ve thought of nothing else since I left Potter’s office.  
  
Have you considered the implications this is going to have for the story?_  
  
Draco sighed again and shut his eyes. He said that he wanted to serve the story, but he had done the worst thing he could as far as that went. After he broke into his office, then Potter would hardly trust him again. Their civilized dinner was a thing of the past. Draco would be lucky if he didn’t get inundated with Howlers tomorrow, or receive several visits from “concerned” Aurors who had heard “rumors” about what he planned to get up to.   
  
 _Actually, I’m surprised that he didn’t arrest me right away. He has enough clout to do that, and the Ministry probably wouldn’t question it._  
  
Then Draco opened his eyes and shook his head back and forth at himself. “You idiot,” he whispered aloud. “Of course he’s not going to do that. He’s probably worried about what you would tell someone if you  _did_  get arrested. You saw that owl arrive in the Fire-Room, and he might suspect that you saw part of the letter itself. All I’d have to do is open my mouth, and the newspapers would find something else to be interested in besides my arrest.”  
  
That changed Draco’s position, although, after a rapid consideration, it didn’t actually cheer him up. Potter would stay away from him with more determination than ever, and probably believe that Draco was just waiting for the chance to betray him. Draco could have wished that Potter would see he had changed since Hogwarts, but because his latest stunt was exactly like one he would have tried to pull during Hogwarts, his hopes in that direction were not sanguine.  
  
 _I can expect him to regard me as an interloper at best and the parasite he said I was at worst._    
  
Draco sighed. He had rarely apologized to any of his subjects, except when he accidently trod on their most painful memories. This time, though, he knew that he should begin there—although Potter was unlikely to decide that an apology ended the matter. What else could Draco do?  
  
 _Admit that I’m not the right one to write this book?_  
  
His muscles stiffened in rejection, and Draco shook his head, once, twice. No. Leaving this story behind was not an option. He would receive visions of what it could have been for the rest of his life otherwise, and those visions would urge him into attempting it at last. But he would betray his artistic instincts when he tried that, because there was no way the story would be good without input from Potter.  
  
 _I have to accept that I need him far more than he needs me. He doesn’t seem to need me at all, in fact.  
  
I’ll need to be humble, and I’ll need to begin with an apology, and then I’ll need to do something to make it up to him.  
  
Though I have no idea what that will be yet._  
  
*  
  
Draco surveyed the singed envelope in dismay. Then he looked up at the bedraggled state of Justice’s feathers, and the furious preening the bird was giving himself—something he did only when he’d been severely discommoded—and sighed. It looked as though Potter had cast a fire hex the moment he saw the owl, and so he’d never had the chance to read the carefully penned apology Draco had spent a half hour on that morning.  
  
He’d thought Potter might take some coaxing. He hadn’t expected to simply meet a wall of silence, even after he figured out that Potter was far more concerned with the mysterious letters that he was receiving than Draco.   
  
Draco sat back and ran his fingers through his hair, frowning. Then he shook his head and delved into the proofs of  _Golden Stories_. What had happened between him and Potter was frustrating and it was tempting to sit here and think up solutions until the Muggle Armageddon that Granger had told him about, but he had work to finish. He doubted Angela would be understanding if he told her that he had missed the deadline for the proofs because he was busy breaking into Harry Potter’s office.  
  
Besides, sometimes working on one project put him in the mood to work on another, or at least gave him the chance to think about various ideas subconsciously. The Potter imbroglio was so intractable that that might work this time, as well.  
  
He was in the middle of a story in which he had included Terry Boot as a side character, and pondering the ways that he could show that the character was a bad poet without actually altering one of Boot’s own poems, when he sucked in a deep breath and sat up. Of course approaching Potter as he was at the moment wouldn’t work. His temper burned hot. Draco was inflaming it with each attempt he made to reach him.  
  
Instead, he should begin from another direction. Determine what was and was not common information about Potter, come up with ways to learn what he needed to know, and go from there.  
  
And maybe he could do some research of his own on that mysterious letter.  
  
Draco hadn’t seen that letter for very long, but he was good at noticing details; it was one of the things that made him such an excellent novelist. The writing had been in capitals to make it harder to trace, but, more to the point, it had had two distinct characteristics that probably wouldn’t mean much to someone who didn’t spend the best portion of his life handling ink and parchment.  
  
First, the parchment was the kind that Draco used to compose his manuscripts, and that most of the writers he knew used as well. Thicker than normal, it was intended to stand up to a lot of blotting, scribbling, and crossing out. Sharpened quills could occasionally poke holes in ordinary paper; the creators of Scrooge’s Self-Strengthening Sheets had decided against letting that happen.  
  
Second, the ink looked dark on first inspection, but Draco had tilted the letter to the light, and there was a deep lavender tint in it.  
  
Draco didn’t know offhand of anyone who used lavender ink, but he didn’t think it would be that common. And he thought he could probably find it in the same sort of shop that would sell Scrooge’s Self-Strengthening Sheets, though he hadn’t looked.  
  
 _If I can find out who’s sending the letters to Potter, then at least he might see me or write to me out of gratitude. I admit that’s not the best beginning, and it’ll take a long time to solve the mystery and then to sit around waiting for him to decide how he wants to respond._  
  
But Draco was hardly going to starve in the meantime. He had  _Golden Stories_  coming out as soon as he and Angela finished a few more rounds of “mistakes-mistakes-who’s-correcting-the-mistakes” and he could always start work on the novel about Ollivander if he  _must_. He was willing to wait as long as it took for the chance to see Potter again and apologize in a way that couldn’t be mistaken as self-serving.  
  
Draco narrowed his eyes as he realized the direction of his thoughts.  _Since when do I sit around desperately waiting for my subjects to come to me and wagging my tail in pathetic gratitude if one of them glances my way?_  
  
It was the rightness that was the answer, of course. The rightness when he watched Potter move in the corridors of the Auror Department. The expression on Potter’s face as he bent over the letter he’d received in the Fire-Room, and how complex those emotions were. Even the way that he looked when cursing Draco’s tongue and how Narcissa had defended him over her own son.  
  
 _It’s right to wait for Potter. He’s always been unique, after all._    
  
Draco sat there a few more minutes, until he had the courage to admit the truth to himself.  _And I’ve never messed up as badly with one of my subjects as I did with him._  
  
Strangely, that admission seemed to remove a mental barrier that had been between him and his work, and after that he knew exactly how to adjust the character based on Boot.  
  
*  
  
“Are you ready?” Draco asked Justice, who sat on his shoulder with his body slightly hunched and his feathers fluffed out in protest against the light rain falling. Draco had cast an Impervious Charm almost the moment they stepped out the door, but Justice wasn’t forgiving him for the few drops of rain he’d caught before that. The owl didn’t enjoy Apparating, either. Draco thought he had several bloody bruises under his robes.  
  
Justice gave him a long-suffering glance and then hunched further. Draco said, “You’re to look for a small golden owl. It’ll be heading for Harry Potter. You remember Harry Potter? He was the one who cast a curse at you.”  
  
Justice turned and blinked at him, interest showing.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, and spent a moment scanning the area in front of him. He was just outside the Ministry, and it wasn’t impossible that someone would catch him. But no one had appeared so far, and Draco didn’t think anyone would. It was shortly after lunch, so everyone would be back at their desks trying to show how industrious they could be. “I want you to capture the little owl and bring its letter to me. You’ll anger Potter by interrupting his post. That would satisfy your desire for revenge, wouldn’t it?” He always made sure to use a gently coaxing tone with Justice, as if the great horned owl were a delicate kitten.  
  
Justice wriggled his tail feathers in excitement. Draco nodded and pressed his gloved hand to Justice’s breast. He stepped up to Draco’s wrist, then launched himself into the air. Draco didn’t think anyone would notice one more owl circling the Ministry, but he Apparated home anyway.  
  
As he settled into the tower, he sent a mental apology to Potter, but he doubted that there was another way to get hold of a letter, especially after he had broken into Potter’s office. If he tried to communicate with Potter—assuming an owl could reach him at all—he would only be certain that Draco was in a conspiracy with the writer, who sounded a nasty bloke.   
  
Draco  _needed_  a letter to examine if he was to prove certain theories he had about the possible identity of the writer, who he probably knew, as he knew most people in wizarding Britain’s literary community. So he would use the method that was almost guaranteed to fetch him one without distressing Potter further.  
  
 _Besides, Potter’s shown no inclination to seek outside help for finding the writer on his own_ , Draco thought reasonably, as he leaned back and linked his hands together behind his head.  _He could if he really wanted to. And he probably doesn’t want to receive those letters anyway, as depressed as they appear to make him._  
  
He felt a tiny twinge of guilt, but he buried it by turning back to the last few pages of  _Golden Stories_  and patiently replacing all the sentences that Angela had taken out which were really essential to the story.  
  
*  
  
Justice swooped in not long after noon, a letter held firmly in his talons. There were golden feathers scattered around his beak, and as far as an owl could be said to look smug, then he did.  
  
Draco, of course, praised him excessively and gave him two whole mice to eat. Justice ate them and then sat on the windowsill, preening himself and saying in silent bird-language that all was well with the world.  
  
Draco spent some time examining the envelope, but in the end, he had to regretfully shake his head. It was one that could have come from everywhere. Maybe the writer thought he was leaving too many clues to his identity if he used  _everything_  from the same shop, or maybe plain envelopes were the ones he happened to have on hand.  
  
He turned the letter over, and smirked slightly when he realized that the flap was sealed with saliva, instead of wax. There were interesting things you could do with saliva with you knew a bit of Dark Arts. He opened the envelope with his wand, and the parchment inside slid out and onto the table.  
  
It was shorter than Draco remembered the other letter being. No paragraphs, at least, but simply two lines set far apart from each other, as if the writer wanted to emphasize each of his ideas separately.  
  
 _HAVE YOU GIVEN MUCH THOUGHT TO WHAT THE WIZARDING WORLD WILL DO WITH A MAD HERO?  
  
YOU DID NOT REALLY SEE THEM. IF YOU SAW THEM, THEN YOU MUST BE SEEING THE THINGS YOU ARE NOW._  
  
Draco bit his lip and sat back in the chair as he studied the letter. Yes, the purple ink and the parchment were the kind he had thought them, but for the moment he was more concerned with the first part of that last sentence. Who were “them?” Why should Potter seeing or not seeing “them” be a matter of concern to the writer?  
  
 _In fact, not a lot of this makes sense. I reckon that Potter’s worried about going mad and that’s why he doesn’t want anyone else to see the letters, but then that begs the question of how the writer learned about this in the first place. And who are “they?”_  
  
Draco knew himself well enough to realize already that the last question was the one that would torment him.  
  
After some more minutes of staring and not coming up with anything, Draco turned back to what he thought he could prove. The ink was purple, and, when he sniffed it delicately, smelled of lilac. Draco smiled. That practically proved that it was Hell’s Fields Ink, which the owners of several small shops sold for the romantically-minded. One shop assistant had explained to Draco enthusiastically that the name of the ink came from the poppies that supposedly littered the fields of hell. Draco had refrained, with heroic strength, from pointing out that poppies were red.  
  
He felt the parchment carefully, and nodded. Yes, that was Scrooge’s Self-Strengthening Sheets, all right. It would take some doing to tear, and Draco recognized the slight crease under his fingers that was meant to correct and straighten the writing of those whose words wandered in wavering lines across the paper.  
  
So that cut some of his suspects down. He was looking for someone who used Hell’s Fields Ink. Whether they had bought it to throw off suspicion or because that was actually the kind of person they were was irrelevant. They had access to it.   
  
So he would go to the several small shops that sold it, and snoop in plain sight. He always had an infallible excuse to ask questions—well, at least he had the right to ask questions of people who weren’t Potter.  
  
Research for his next novel, of course.  
  
*  
  
“And your name is Bertha.” Draco nodded and wrote the name down, as if he were likely to forget how to spell it between one moment and the next. He looked up and fluttered his eyelashes at the shop assistant who was “helping” him “write his book.” It was no hardship, since she kept fluttering hers at him. “Right. How many bottles of the ink would you say that you usually sell in a week?”  
  
Bertha smiled. She had the palest skin Draco had ever seen outside of his own family and thick dark hair that dangled around her face in untidy strands held in place by magic. Her eyes were wide and blue and elfin, and Draco might have been tempted by her if mere beauty could have called and held his attention. But he needed depth and fire, and Bertha resembled a butterfly who would burn away when the flame intensified.   
  
“Probably only six or seven,” Bertha said, with a light shrug of her shoulders. “I think that Mr. Comfrey wants to get rid of it, but then every so often someone comes in and asks for it. And the people who make the ink  _do_  sometimes appear and inquire about their sales in these loud officious voices.” She dropped her chin and frowned fiercely at the air next to Draco’s left ear. “And how many bottles of Hell’s Fields do you need to replenish your stock, my good man?” she asked in a booming voice.  
  
Draco laughed, the way he was meant to, and because he was genuinely amused, for once. “Do you happen to remember if you sold any recently?” He hated not having a time frame. Still, he didn’t think Potter would be willing to disclose how long he’d been receiving the letters.  
  
Bertha shrugged and gestured around the inside of Comfrey’s Comforts for the Burgeoning Writer. “I don’t work here all the time. I know we haven’t sold any today or Tuesday, but I don’t know about yesterday.”  
  
Draco nodded, disappointed. Well, asking like this wasn’t a guaranteed means of reaching an answer; he had to hope to find either a general pattern or someone who remembered a striking customer. “Well, thank you for the material, Bertha,” he said. “One more question. What would you say the typical Hell’s Fields buyer is like? Old, young, anxious, successful?”  
  
Bertha looked around to see if anyone was nearby among the crowded shelves, then leaned towards him and whispered, “To tell you the truth, Mr. Malfoy, it’s mostly the young, romantic types. And the ones who fancy that they can write scary stories but haven’t ever actually tried it. As though the ink would make them into writers capable of handling psychological wounds and horror suddenly.”  
  
Draco smiled back at her. He had to resist the urge to ask if she was a fan, not because she’d taken his name calmly but because she was the kind of person he would  _like_  to have read his books. “Thanks, Bertha. I’ll let you know if I have some other research that requires your important perspective.”  
  
Bertha seemed to take his half-flirtatious tone the way Draco intended it, not a promise that more flirtation would be forthcoming but teasing banter that she could respond to with a smile. “Oh, yes, I would enjoy that,” she said. “It’s not every day that I’m told my perspective is important. At least, not my perspective on ink.”  
  
Draco winked at her and slipped away towards the front of the shop, nodding to several people he knew on the way. Yolanda Timpany was staring at the nearest pieces of parchment as if she expected them to rearrange themselves for her pleasure. Xerxes Columbus, who was engaged on the writing of a massive epic poem that he probably wouldn’t finish before his death, tested the weight of two quills in his fingers. Terry Boot was sighing melodramatically because the shop didn’t have the brand of ink he happened to require.  
  
 _Please let Boot be the person writing to Potter_ , Draco thought fervently as he stepped out the front door.  _It would be so nice to be able to despise him for some reason unconnected to his poetry._    
  
A hand grabbed the front of his robe and slammed him against the window, making it tremble. Draco’s first thought was an insane hope that Comfrey wouldn’t make him pay if he’d cracked the glass.  
  
Then he looked up along the arm and into the face of the person who held him, and hissed in surprise. It was Potter.  
  
“I knew that I saw you come in here,” Potter whispered, so softly that Draco doubted he would have heard him if he were a few inches farther away. He leaned forwards, and his wand, invisible from most angles, pressed into the soft flesh at the base of Draco’s neck again. Draco had to admire the effort, and he tucked away the sight of Potter’s pose for an appearance in the novel. “You’re the one sending the letters to me, aren’t you?”  
  
Draco, opening his mouth to give a pretty speech about how he was sorry for what he’d done, was caught completely by surprise. He stared for a moment or so, and then spluttered unattractively, “ _No_ , of course not!”  
  
“I know that this shop sells the ink the letters are written with.” Potter nodded towards the sign over Comfrey’s door and then glared dramatically into Draco’s eyes. Again, the effect was nice, or at least Draco told himself that was why he became breathless from the pressure of that intense green gaze. “And to see you coming out of this place when you’ve shown that you have far too great an interest in my personal life?” He leaned closer again, until his nose almost brushed Draco’s cheek. “It fits very well.”  
  
“It doesn’t fit well  _at all_ ,” Draco said sharply. “I don’t have any of that particular ink in my possession. I was investigating who has bought it so that I could try to figure out who was sending you the letters, if you must know. And I’m sorry,” he added, deciding that he probably should have said this in the first place, but Potter was so exasperating. “Sorry for breaking into your office, I mean. But I’ll have you know that this isn’t the only place that sells that ink, so you can’t be sure it came from here.”  
  
Potter stared at him with eyes that looked like they could strip the soul from a Dementor. Draco raised his chin and tried to pretend he was too proud to be affected or disconcerted or embarrassed by that stare, but with his groin tingling and his cheeks hot, he doubted that Potter thought so.  
  
“I think I believe you,” Potter whispered. In a single smooth motion, he pulled himself free of Draco and stepped back. His eyes were so wary that Draco was impressed; he had seen Justice make less threatening moves. “That doesn’t mean that you should cross my path again, Malfoy. Especially in an effort to find out where the letters are coming from.”  
  
“Do you believe me about the apology, too?” Draco asked, ignoring the advice. He was glad to see that Potter had been at least intelligent enough to figure out the clue about the ink, but he wasn’t highly placed in the writing community and couldn’t investigate as easily as Draco. “I do mean that.”  
  
Potter gave him a merciless smile. “It doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not, since I have no intention of letting you near me ever again.” He turned, his cloak whipping around him, and strode towards the top of the street.  
  
Draco hurried after him. “But don’t you see,” he called to Potter’s back, “that what I did was stupid, and poorly thought out, and I do apologize for that? I didn’t mean to hurt you. I let my exasperation carry me away, and—”  
  
“I don’t believe you,” Potter called over his shoulder, “because you’re only saying you’re sorry because this disrupts your research for your story. You’re not sorry for hurting  _me_  in any way. I’ve learned one lesson in the last few years, Malfoy: I only  _need_  to associate with people who have my welfare in mind.”  
  
Then he Apparated away, and left Draco standing in the middle of the street looking foolish. His recalcitrant brain, of course, pictured how even that would look in the middle of a novel.  
  
Draco sighed and turned towards his own home.  _He’s mostly right, but still…  
  
I still didn’t want to hurt him._  
  
That emotion burned right beside his unquenchable curiosity about the letters, and his squirmy guilt that he’d had Justice steal one of the letters bound for Potter, and the fierce rightness that made him want to write Potter’s story anyway.  
  
 _I reckon I could do worse than take the advice Granger gave me, and try to learn more about the small things in Potter’s life._


	5. Intimate Details

“Why would you want to look through those?” Madam Pince’s voice was sharp as a chisel. She leaned forwards protectively across her desk, as though she thought Draco would try to spring over it and snatch what he wanted by force.  
  
Draco offered the woman the rueful smile that he’d given Bertha when she asked why he needed to know details about ink. “Research for the next novel.”   
  
If anything, the librarian’s eyes narrowed further. “Oh? And a novel that will be set in the modern wizarding world, as all of yours are—don’t think I don’t know your books, young man—requires details from newspapers that are fourteen years old?”  
  
 _Listen, you old witch_ , Draco longed to say.  _I know those papers are doing nothing but rotting back there. You might as well let me have them. I’ll be the only one who’s read them in Merlin knows how long. What do you care if a few of them fall apart in my hands? There are always_  Reparo  _spells._  
  
Except he couldn’t say anything like that, of course, both because it would be undiplomatic and because Pince was one of those people unmoved by practical or monetary considerations. Her obsession was her library, and she would believe that moving about or changing any of the contents was impossible.  
  
Luckily, Draco had other tricks that were available to him, particularly when he knew his audience. He started intently into her eyes and lowered his voice. “I am producing a modern book, Madam Pince, but I  _despise_  the shoddy standards of modern printing. I’ve persuaded Murray’s that this novel should be made to last.”  
  
Pince uncoiled like a snake that someone had offered a mouse. “Oh?” she breathed.  
  
Draco held his wince back as her breath blew in his face. It smelled like dust and old leather. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed that far too many books nowadays fall apart after you’ve read them only a few hundred times. Disgraceful.”  
  
“It certainly is,” Pince agreed in a hard voice, standing up straight. “Which is the reason that I must ban the students from reading some of the books. If they would  _listen_  to me, they would realize—”  
  
Draco moved hastily. He didn’t want this to degenerate into Pince’s ranting about her students. He imagined she had years and years of remarks stored up that no one had bothered to listen to. “Yes,” he said. “But what if books existed that were more like the old grimoiries? Bound with powerful spells as well as the petty ones used now, and with glue and bindings that had themselves been enchanted?”  
  
“You have my interest, Mr. Malfoy.” Pince pushed her glasses up her nose. “Such a book would be easier to appreciate and to store and repair.”  
  
“Yes.” Draco laid a hand on her desk, which was the closest he wanted to come to touching her, and smiled charmingly into her eyes. “The novel I want to write now will be like that. But I want the contents to match the binding, you know. The binding will demonstrate some attention to history and sense of tradition. I want my writing to do the same thing. And for that, I need the details I’ll harvest from those newspapers.”  
  
Pince stared off into the distance for a moment. Draco waited patiently. He could see the obsessive gleam in her eyes, and he didn’t want to interrupt the trance that might be his best way of getting her to convince herself.  
  
Then she snapped her gaze back to him, and nodded briskly. “Your commitment to your artistic principles is immense, Mr. Malfoy, and should be encouraged. I will fetch the newspapers for you. There’s a room in the back of the library where you can read them in peace.”  
  
Draco let out a sigh of relief as he followed her, mingled with one of regret.  _The Malfoy charm triumphs again. Now, if only Potter were so easy to charm._  
  
*  
  
Draco paged carefully through the yellowed copies of the  _Daily Prophet_. Though the library contained other newspapers, which Madam Pince had also placed at his disposal, the  _Prophet_  was the paper that reported most often on Potter. The articles were full of lies, of course, but Draco wasn’t interested in the articles.  
  
He wanted the photographs.  
  
 _Notice the small details_ , Granger had told him, and Draco intended to. Particularly since the photographs moved, and he could tell much about Potter from looking at what his imaged self was doing—or at least he could tell much about the man Potter had been from sixteen to ten years ago, just after the war. He would have to be careful and perceptive about integrating this older picture and the modern man.  
  
There was the photograph of Potter at Granger and Weasley’s wedding, in neat dress robes that contrasted with the tangle of hair that nothing could tame. Draco smiled in spite of himself as he watched Potter watching Granger and Weasley. The pure affection in his eyes made it easier to think of Potter’s friends as likeable.   
  
Then Potter turned his head, and his eyes looked straight out of the photograph. At once his face took on a blank expression, and he edged backwards until his body mostly ducked out of the frame. Then he peered out like a small child looking around a door at a monster.  
  
Draco blinked.  _Is that when he noticed the photographer?_  
  
The rest of the photos he looked at—at least the ones that had Potter in the background, usually as part of a larger group at a celebration—were the same. Potter tensed the moment he realized someone had a camera pointed at him. Probably the real Potter was too diplomatic ever to do so, but the image sidled off, or crouched down as if to hide himself, or ran away. Sometimes he hid behind a taller person, usually Weasley.  
  
And each time, he wore a scowl on his face.  
  
In the ones where Potter was the subject of the photo and couldn’t flee, he stood stiffly, his hands always clenched into fists or his arms folded. Sometimes he smiled, but the smile was on the edge of a glare. Draco wondered that the photographers didn’t seem to notice. Then again, some of them probably didn’t care what the picture looked like as long as they had  _a_  picture, and others would think Potter’s discomfort added an edge of tension that made the photograph more exciting.  
  
Draco knew what he was looking at. He had seen the same look, though less intense, on Lovegood’s face when she spoke of what she’d endured in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor, and on Granger’s when she confessed that there had been a time during the war when she was sure that she would never see Weasley again.  
  
Potter was in pain.   
  
But why would the mere snapping of a photograph make him seem so? Especially when he had been a celebrity since he had entered the wizarding world?  
  
Thoughtfully, Draco looked at some of the more recent papers, the ones from between five and ten years ago. By then, another reason to photograph Potter had been added to the pile: he was a top Auror, involved in more captures than anyone else, and a lot of the people threatened by Dark wizards liked to  _see_  them in custody, to increase their feeling of safety. Now Potter was the center of attention, and he had a ready-made pose available to him, one that he had probably been trained specifically to assume, unlike the pose of hero.  
  
He could have set his jaw and held a wand to the throat or temple of whoever he’d snatched today and looked stern and manly. It would have satisfied most of the audience, who wouldn’t know any difference between that pose and Potter the real person anyway.  
  
Yet even in these pictures, Potter couldn’t seem to do that. He stood in a resigned way instead, muscles tensed to back up or run away, or kept his eyes fastened on the wizard or witch who stood in chains. Then, Draco noted, he could make his expression as hard as he liked.  
  
Draco laid the papers down and leaned back in the chair, in part to give his eyes a rest, but also to consider what he’d just learned. He sneezed some dust out of his nose and stared at the ceiling, where, instead of windows, bright, cold lights hung. Madam Pince had explained that light might damage the more fragile old paper, and though Draco could easily have said that was what Preservation Charms were for, he’d nodded enough times to satisfy her.  
  
The conclusion was inescapable, no matter how many times he tried to dodge it.  
  
Potter would never be comfortable with his heroism, no matter how long it had been since the war—in part because he’d built up a heroic reputation in the aftermath, not just during it. And yet he went on acting as an Auror anyway. Mere discomfort was not enough to make him give up a job that protected other people.   
  
He didn’t mind showing that discomfort, though it seemed to be in ways that most people didn’t notice. Maybe most people weren’t looking. So he was still terminally honest, Draco thought, as he had been all his life.  
  
And the biggest revelation, the one that was most certainly true, the one Draco did not want to admit because it threw the whole concept of a novel based on Potter into peril…  
  
Potter didn’t like attention.  
  
Draco splayed his fingers over his eyes.  _Fuck. What do I do now?_  
  
The answers piled into him—not answers to the question he’d just asked, but to the question of writing a book based on Potter. Potter would hate the renewed interest in his exploits it would stir up. He would hate people asking him which parts of the story were true and which weren’t. No chance that he would adopt Granger’s cold stare and quick way with a hex when people thought they knew her through  _Fire in the Darkness_ , or Longbottom’s shy, embarrassed smile, or Lovegood’s serene response that  _all_  the parts of the story were true, in one way or another. He would hate the calls for interviews that many people, including Murray’s, probably, would issue.  
  
He had told Draco that he was a private person in the Fire-Room and that was the reason he didn’t want to share his memories. Draco wondered if anyone but Potter himself and his closest friends realized how private. It was no wonder he clung to the secrets that he wanted preserved, and why he would be frantic if the mysterious letter-writer had perhaps discovered one of them.  
  
He would not want to answer Draco’s questions, and he would never give permission for some of his most intimate details to appear in the book.  
  
Draco placed that information side-by-side with the force that was still driving him to write the book, the golden energy shimmering up his veins when he thought of making Potter into a vision of glory.  
  
One was reality, the other dreams. Draco needed both to accomplish the kind of writing he excelled at.  
  
And they were both as strong as each other. He would need something else to help him make the decision as to whether to write the book or not.  
  
Draco sighed and put the papers carefully back in their places, wearing the Gloves Charm that Pince had taught him. He doubted he could learn anything more than he already had from the public records of Potter’s life. He would have to talk to someone who knew him well.  
  
There was bloody little choice as far as that went. Granger had made it clear she’d closed her mouth when it came to Potter. He’d angered his mother, and probably exhausted the little information she possessed. He didn’t want to think about approaching Weasley—the cretin had rejected every offer Draco made him, even the apology he tried to send right after the war—and the Aurors in the Department who had contact with Potter might be willing to talk, but Draco wouldn’t trust them to know the kind of things he needed.  
  
Which left one person as a fairly good source.  
  
*  
  
“Draco.” Lovegood’s voice was soft and clear, the way it always was. She had dreamy eyes, the way she always did. She called him by his first name as if they’d been friends since childhood, and she smiled at him in a way that caused the tight coil in Draco’s gut to relax. “Come in. I’m going to finish a Wrackspurt hunt, and then I’ll prepare the chocolate.”  
  
Draco followed Lovegood into the long, ramshackle house that she shared with Longbottom, her husband. It was on the borders of a forest that Draco didn’t know the name of, and which didn’t appear on a map; Lovegood had to relax the Unplottable Charm each time he decided to visit so he could get to it. The house itself was made of wood, the walls constructed of the trunks and roots of living trees. Draco admired the effect, but it made the floor underfoot rather knobby and caused leaves to fall in one’s hair.  
  
“Neville’s not home,” Lovegood said, when she had assiduously traveled around the room twice, peering at the walls with a lens made of beaten gold, and then started to heat a pot of chocolate. “We received report of a black unicorn in the Forbidden Forest and he had to leave right away. Did you need to give me a message for him?”  
  
Draco smiled in spite of himself. No matter how often he came to talk to Lovegood, she assumed he wanted to talk to Longbottom instead. “No. I wanted to ask you about Harry Potter.”  
  
“Oh, I think Rita Skeeter knows much more about him,” said Lovegood seriously, as she settled into a chair across from him and started tying a garland of mint in her hair. “After all, I was only at school at the same time he was and fought in one battle with him.”  
  
Draco blinked. That was something he didn’t remember hearing. Of course, he’d had more trouble in his interviews with her than with some of his others; she tended to wander from the point, and he tried not to bring her back too sharply, because he wanted to incorporate so much of her speaking style into  _The Hope-Well_  to serve Selene. “What battle was that?”  
  
Lovegood looked at him with very wide eyes, as though he had heaped shite in the middle of her table. Draco coughed uncomfortably. Lovegood had a way of making her most outlandish actions seem normal, so that you began to think  _you_  were the one who lived in a different world from reality.  
  
“When I was in my fourth year, of course,” Lovegood said, “and when Harry was in the year above that. We flew on thestrals to the Department of Mysteries. I was glad to be with him. Watching him fight was like watching a hippogriff fight.”  
  
Draco thought that was an odd observation, but it was exactly the kind of small detail that might yield something important about Potter, so he said, “How is Potter like a hippogriff?”  
  
“Oh, don’t say it that way,” Lovegood said, pained. “That sounds like the opening of a bad joke, and I would hate to think of hippogriffs or Harry as bad jokes. They’re rather good ones, the universe’s laughter.” She stood up as the pot of chocolate squeaked. “Think of a different way to ask,” she added over her shoulder, as she poured chocolate into two delicate cups.  
  
Draco put his chin on one fist and watched Lovegood in silence. She hummed softly under her breath, her blonde hair floating freely around her. Her eyes peered in perpetual surprise from behind her large glasses, but Draco knew that she understood far more than she let on she did. She simply saw no reason to let that reality trouble her.  
  
When Lovegood turned around with the two cups of chocolate, she was smiling. “I thought of a way for you to phrase it,” she announced.  
  
Draco accepted his cup and sipped carefully. Lovegood never served a drink hot enough to burn his tongue. She had learned the spells to avoid doing so from studying house-elves, she had claimed. If so, it was the first time Draco had ever heard of the study of house-elves doing anything useful for anyone, apart from Granger. “How is that?”  
  
“How does Harry  _fight_  like a hippogriff?” Lovegood beamed at him. A smear of chocolate was by her lower lip. “Do you see? Hippogriffs do other things than fight, and so does Harry, so it leaves part of them free. Some parts of us should always be free.”  
  
Draco concealed his sigh under his breath and said, “How does Potter fight like a hippogriff?”  
  
“You know how proud hippogriffs are.” For a moment, Lovegood seemed to glance at the scar on Draco’s forearm where the ugly beast had bitten him long ago, but he wasn’t sure she really had. “They fight because something offends their honor. Harry’s like that. Evil in the world offends his honor. He has to fight it.”  
  
“I used to think he wanted to be a hero,” Draco said softly, more to himself than Lovegood. “I know that’s not true now. But are you sure that he didn’t just fight because he hated Voldemort?”  
  
Lovegood’s face went through one of those rare transformations where suddenly she was sharp, and alive, and  _present_ , and Draco knew he was looking at one of the most intelligent people he had ever met. “Voldemort isn’t alive any more. Why would he fight all those Dark wizards when he didn’t have to? He could have retired. It would be safer, and he’s done enough. We all told him that. But he couldn’t stop, because there was still evil out there, and the world needs people like him as much today as it did yesterday. That’s what he said when I asked.” Lovegood smiled at Draco’s elbow. “Isn’t that a wonderful saying?”  
  
It was. Draco definitely intended to have the hero he created to replace Potter in his novel say it—  
  
If he decided to write the novel.  
  
He cleared his throat and did his best to find an answer for one of the questions looking at the newspaper photographs had prompted in him. “Why hasn’t Potter learned how to live with his celebrity? He’s had over twenty years to do it now, and yet he still acts eleven years old when it comes to that.”  
  
Lovegood gave him a look of surprising pity and shook her head. “The answer to that question is obvious,” she said. “Very unworthy of you, Draco. Ask more interesting questions, and you should receive more interesting answers.”  
  
“It’s not obvious to me.” Draco heard the snappish tone in his voice and forced himself to calm. Lovegood tended to retreat into her own mental world if confronted with too much anger, probably a defense against all the taunting she had received at Hogwarts. He said in a smoother tone when he felt able to, “Potter’s endured so much. Surely he could endure this, which has to be less terrible than facing Voldemort each and every school year?”  
  
“Of course not,” Lovegood said, sounding faintly shocked. “Harry doesn’t like standing in one place.”  
  
Draco experienced a moment of despair. That wasn’t the first time Lovegood had said something that Draco thought was profoundly insightful, but which he lacked the ability to decipher. This time, it drove him more mad than usual. The information he needed to crack Potter’s shell open could be hiding in those words, but it was beyond his reach.  
  
“A person does one heroic thing, and then stands still the rest of his life and contemplates that thing,” Lovegood went on, shaking her head. “He becomes enthralled with mirrors and reflections. But moving people go on, and do other things, and  _they_  see the reflections of other beings in the water.” She smiled serenely at Draco, as if what she said should make perfect sense. “Harry’s a moving person.”  
  
 _You’ve solved harder problems than this in your time, such as why you find it impossible to write about Weasleys_ , Draco reminded himself.  _You can think about this, and find the answer, even though Lovegood won’t tell you._  
  
He pressed his fingers into his temples and sat still for a few minutes, thinking. Lovegood rose to her feet and trailed about the room, flicking a cloth at parts of the wooden walls and murmuring to them under her breath.  
  
The easiest possible interpretation of Lovegood’s words was that Potter wasn’t self-absorbed; he saw others’ reflections instead of gazing enthralled at his own. Well, Draco had already known that. A self-absorbed person wasn’t the kind who sacrificed his life for others.  
  
Then there were her words about motion and standing still. Potter didn’t like to look back on his past. Again, Draco had already known that from the photographs and Potter’s refusal to tell someone he trusted about the details of his sacrifice before this. Anyone who studied Potter closely enough would know that.  
  
 _So combine the ideas of reflection and motion._  
  
Draco felt stupid in the next moment. Of course. Potter didn’t like being judged for a single heroic exploit. He didn’t want to stand still and rest on his laurels of killing Voldemort for the rest of his life, which might be part of the reason that he’d become an Auror, so that people would have to consider some of his other actions. That part of it charmed Draco, because it indicated a subtle selfishness, or at least consideration of self, in Potter that Draco had seen no sign of before. He would have feared that he might actually be writing about a perfect plaster hero, except that Potter had slammed him into walls and tied his tongue in knots.  
  
And Potter must be uncomfortable with the attention he received because he thought, or suspected, that all of it stemmed from one incident in his life, his defeat of Voldemort. Or maybe even the definitive one before then, when he had survived the Killing Curse and become the Boy-Who-Lived.  
  
 _What must it be like to have your life defined by an event that happened when you were a baby, an event that you can’t even remember?_    
  
Draco closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers gently back and forth over his temples this time, to soothe his building headache.  
  
There was no way that Potter would ever consent to let Draco write a novel about him. Because what Draco wrote about was the war, and the way that people’s lives changed as a result of it. Potter didn’t want to be defined by the war. He would never give his sanction to a text that froze that part of his life and constructed his being around it.  
  
Draco’s effort was doomed.  
  
And if what he understood about Potter was true in all particulars, not just a few, he  _should not_  write it, because that would make him no better than all the people who slobbered over Potter for a single action, who tried to turn him into a picture when he was busy moving out of the frame.  
  
But that realization did not kill his curiosity about the letters, or the feeling of golden rightness when he thought of writing about Potter, or—  
  
Or his interest in Potter for himself.  
  
Draco opened his eyes and stared at the table.  
  
He had liked learning these details about Potter for their own sake. He wanted to know more, the kinds of things that Granger and Weasley would never give him. He wanted to sit across from Potter at a table again and ask questions that had nothing to do with the war, simply to see his eyes flare with something other than distrust. He wanted to find the letter writer and watch Potter look at him with uncertain gratitude.  
  
 _But if I can’t and shouldn’t write about him, why do I feel this?_    
  
“Some questions are very hard to answer,” he said aloud.  
  
Lovegood turned around and gave him an intensely sympathetic smile. “Such as all questions about Wrackspurts,” she agreed.


	6. Initiating Contact

The first thing Draco did when he got home was scribble a crisp letter to Angela explaining that he probably wouldn’t be writing the book about Potter. It was formal; it involved words, which he knew how to analyze and manipulate; and it was easy, unlike most of the other decisions that he needed to make about the Potter novel. Justice took it away with an eager hoot. Angela was one of Draco’s few correspondents who kept owl treats on hand.  
  
Then he settled against the back of the chair and scowled at the ceiling.  
  
 _I wish I knew what I was supposed to do now._    
  
He’d followed a procedure for his novels for so long that he felt rather lost without one. He contacted the person he was thinking of writing about, received permission for all relevant details, conducted interviews, decided which details to include whole and which to transform or exclude, created an outline that consisted of important scenes floating in a syrup of vague images, and then began to write. Later would come the tearing-up of the outline, the creation of a new one, cramps in his right hand from writing with a quill for hundreds of pages, and much swearing. But at least he knew what destination he was headed for with that process and had some idea of how long it would take.  
  
He could apologize to Potter for years and it might never take.  
  
Then Draco snapped his fingers at himself and sat up. He was acting like the villain in  _The Hope-Well_ , whom he’d based on Theodore Nott during a particularly stupid period of his life, whinging about hypotheticals when he had the power to change the hypothetical situation into reality.  
  
 _All I need to do is offer Potter something solid, instead of nebulous apologies that he has every right not to believe. I think Skeeter has probably ‘apologized’ for prying into his life before, too. Why should he believe me without evidence that I really want to help?  
  
I need to find out something more about the writer of the letters. Depending on how hard that is, it’ll give me not only evidence to show Potter, but some indication of how much shit and deep water I’m willing to wade through for him. And then maybe I can figure out why I’m so interested in him when he won’t be the subject of a novel_.  
  
*  
  
Draco paused outside the Writer’s Labyrinth to conjure a mirror in his palm so that he could look at his face. Yes, he looked artfully pale and disheveled—like someone burning with a major secret, who wanted to confess that secret even as he knew that it probably wasn’t the best thing to do. He smiled and dismissed the mirror.   
  
He didn’t need to say anything aloud. He could construct a story out of his gestures and facial expressions, and every writer in the Labyrinth—except perhaps the historians and other authors of nonfiction, whom Draco often found baffling—would know how to read it. Eventually, one of them would ask him what piece of gossip or bad news he had heard, and Draco could fling his rock into the calm pool.  
  
He stepped into the Labyrinth, and paused to read the scraps of writing pinned to the first stone. They were mostly cryptic, only a single word, but sometimes a full sentence or paragraph. All of them were from books popular at the moment. Someone who read widely or had acquaintance with most of wizarding Britain’s literary community and its current projects would be the only one who could understand what the messages meant.  
  
And, thus, thread the maze.  
  
It didn’t take Draco long to notice that all the messages today were about love. Love began with  _l_ , and so did left, and thus he should take all left turns until he came to the second stone. Sometimes the code was more complicated, with messages spelling out a pattern of turns in different directions, but Elena Cassidy, who owned the Labyrinth, must be in a simple mood today.  
  
Draco stepped into the maze beyond the stone. It was made of heavy brick and contained several disorientation charms that were meant to blight a navigator’s sense of direction. Draco laid a hand on the wall and let it guide him whenever his head swam and rendered him uncertain of which way to turn.   
  
 _Left, left, left, left._  The maze seemed to rise and fall beneath him, and swirl madly in several directions, but his hand remained in place, touching reality. Draco made the final left turn and came out in front of the second stone, a large piece of marble that looked as if it had been chipped irregularly out of a quarry. The quarry had probably let Cassidy have it for cheap.  
  
There was only a single piece of parchment there today. Draco’s eyebrows rose, and his suspicions about Cassidy’s mood increased.  _Be careful when you enter the middle_ , he told himself, and read the message.  
  
 _When the stars shine down on me, I feel grieved, knowing that they have shone alike on life and happiness, death and despair. I can take no comfort from their light._  
  
Draco sighed. He recognized the passage, all right; it was from the novel he’d based on Dean Thomas,  _Self-Portrait With Roses_. Immediately after the character thought that, he fell to the ground and lay there, paralyzed by his doubt, shaking with fear and unable to move. The direction  _Draco_  had to move in was obvious. But he didn’t like it.  
  
 _Fuck you, anyway, Cassidy_ , he thought crossly, and then stepped around behind the stone and jabbed one foot strongly at the floor.  
  
The brick slid away beneath him with a grating sound, and suddenly he was hurtling through a tunnel that twisted and coiled as it burrowed deeper into the earth, a tunnel that was barely wide enough to contain his body. Draco found himself unconsciously holding his breath, even though he knew very well that the tunnel was equipped with Cushioning Charms and minor Repelling Hexes that would keep him out of contact with the walls.  
  
Around he went until his head spun and he thought he might vomit, and then he landed in the middle of a large pile of feathers.  _At least it isn’t pine branches this time_ , Draco thought, as he climbed to his feet and coughed and sneezed feathers out of his face. Sometimes Cassidy took her moods out on her customers before they even reached the center of the Labyrinth.  
  
He stood in front of the third boulder now, a white stone with a faint, eerie green glow like foxfire around it. It was at least bright enough for Draco to read the message pinned to the stone without a  _Lumos. Much do I wonder at those who cannot love._    
  
That was a little more unclear, but there was no reference to going up or down there, and no words that began with r. Draco turned left again, and, when he found only spiraling walls instead of another stone with another message, he once more began turning left every time he encountered a corner, hand on the brick to guide him as before.  
  
Soon he heard a burst of laughter from up ahead and felt the warmth of a crackling fire. He sped up, fixing the expression of nervous gossip-hoarding he’d practiced on his face.  
  
The center of the Labyrinth was a large room, most of the time, though it varied in size as Cassidy shifted the walls of the maze to her liking, the way that the routes to reach the room did. Sharp corners and blunt, rounded projections broke up the line of sight so that people could have private or public conversations as they chose. There were seven fireplaces, or maybe five; Draco had never managed to come up with a consistent count, and suspected that Cassidy changed that, too, as she chose. Each bore a large and crackling fire with plenty of fodder. Raised above the rest of the floor was the bar where Cassidy, a tall woman with red hair and enough venom in her gaze for fifty Grangers, reigned in solitary splendor.  
  
The tables were crowded tonight; at a glance, Draco made out most of the usual suspects, like Denise, Yolanda, and Boot, and a few of the ones who never seemed to venture out of their homes unless it was a special occasion. Rosemary Ashling simpered about finishing her latest murder mystery to an awe-stricken crowd of admirers, twining one orange curl around her fingers. Gabriel Wrexby, the only man whose poetry Draco found more poisonous than Boot’s, was holding court in the corner next to Ashling, declaiming part of his latest poem and then breaking off to stare moodily into his drink. Draco shuddered in distaste as he passed Wrexby and made his way up to Cassidy. At least Boot wrote in what was recognizably English, instead of smashing words together to create nonsense phrases such as “shinglebrooding.”  
  
“Draco.” Cassidy nodded at him in a way that suggested she had read the advance proofs of  _Golden Stories_  and approved. Draco relaxed marginally. His deception would be much easier if Cassidy was cooperating with him. “What will you have to drink tonight?”  
  
“Water. Just water.” Draco shuddered and cast a glance around the room, turning in a complete circle as he did so. When he turned back, Cassidy was regarding him with that level glance that meant he had interested her. Draco pretended to catch it with surprise, as if it hadn’t been his intention to provoke it in the first place, and gave a little shamefaced laugh. “I must look a right mess,” he added, and touched his hair self-consciously.  
  
“Not as much as you usually do,” Cassidy said, and pushed a glass of water across the bar to him. “What’s troubling you?”  
  
“The notion of a criminal hiding in our community.” Draco seized the glass and drank the water off at one gulp, though as always Cassidy kept it cold enough to kill a shark. “I understand there’s such a thing as artistic integrity, but threatening murder because you want to write about a murder is a bit much, even for me.”  
  
Cassidy went still, and there were sidelong glances from either side. Draco kept on staring into his glass, even though he wanted to burst out laughing with triumph. He had judged his audience well. Writers, even more than most people, had a sensitivity to certain words. “Murder” was certainly one of them.  
  
“How much evidence do you have for this?” Cassidy asked.  
  
Draco knew this was the moment when he had to tread most carefully. Cassidy had— _uneasy_  relations with the Ministry. What she had once done or been arrested for, Draco didn’t know, but he did know that she didn’t tolerate the slightest hint of lawbreaking in the Labyrinth. If someone committed a crime, she would make sure they were no longer welcome among her customers.  
  
Luckily for himself as well as his ploy to plant gossip that would circulate around to the writer threatening Potter, Draco was a good liar. More than a decade of twisting and transforming the truth to suit his purposes had taken care of that.  
  
“Enough.” Draco shut his eyes, because they would reveal less that way, and shuddered, gripping the bar as if he was about to fall over. “I’ve seen the threatening letters written to someone who certainly hasn’t committed a crime one should threaten murder over. I know that the ink and parchment that went to make up the letters were such as only a writer would use. I’ve seen the way that the victim has to look over their shoulder and watch out for everyone because they don’t have a clue where the threats are coming from.” After a moment, he had decided not to reveal Potter’s gender. It could be too much, especially since the rumors must have spread that he was trying to write a novel about Potter by now.  
  
Cassidy swiped with unusual force at the bar. “If I catch the person doing this,” she said, with calm that Draco knew could hide a Dark curse, “then yes, I would make sure the Aurors knew exactly who it was.”  
  
Draco hid his delight with a shrug that he made as casual as possible. Cassidy would make sure word of his made-up story spread, and in the reactions to it, then Draco thought he would catch a glimpse of the culprit. “Thanks, Cassidy. It disturbs me.” He took on an earnest expression and deployed one of Granger’s arguments. “Maybe we should think more about the real people around us instead of just the stories we write about.”  
  
Cassidy nodded fierce agreement and refused the Sickles that he tried to offer for the water. Draco lingered for a while, telling his story over to those people who hadn’t been able to hear it the first time and elaborating it with the details he felt it was safe to use. Scrooge’s Self-Strengthening Sheets seemed an innocuous detail, as well as the confirmation that the victim’s behavior was becoming increasingly erratic as a result of the threat. That last, at least, was something the criminal already had to know about.  
  
Draco felt quite pleased with himself when he returned the way he had come, retracing his steps through the maze. (He did check each stone first to make sure the messages that told the way through the Labyrinth hadn’t changed). He had offered bait that might make someone bite, but not enough details to lead anyone who snatched at it from curiosity straight to Potter. And he had signaled himself as an interested party, which meant that gossip in the matter would come to him.  
  
He chuckled as he rose back up the tunnel and landed near the stone that bore the inscription from his own novel. Perhaps this would be enough solid evidence for Potter, who could be told to keep his eye on the literary community and give it a good shake now and then to see what happened.  
  
Someone seized him around the throat and spun him, slamming his face into the brick wall. Draco felt the pressure of something cold and hard against the middle of his back, and breath against his ear. His attacker didn’t speak, though, and didn’t stand close enough that Draco could feel anything about the body, so he didn’t know who it was, how tall, or even whether male or female.  
  
He went limp and slid to the ground as if he had fainted. That gave his attacker a momentary puzzle as they attempted to juggle Draco’s body with the weapon or wand that they’d been holding on him.  
  
A moment was all Draco needed.  
  
He rolled out, from under the attacker, screaming and kicking and biting and flailing. Several of his punches landed, and the analytic side of him thought that was a good thing, because he could watch for glamours to disguise bruises now among writers of his acquaintance. But the other person reacted quickly, too, and snatched up a bottle of something lying nearby that they sprayed in Draco’s eyes just as he tried to haul himself upright and see who this was.  
  
Draco screamed and had to claw at his suddenly burning eyes. Whatever this was, it  _stung_ , as though someone had just jammed needles on fire into his head. He wanted to stand up and pursue the footsteps running frantically into the distance, but he had to curl up on his side instead and fight to keep from vomiting from the pain.  
  
It was Cassidy who found him; she had always been good at charming the Labyrinth to respond to certain sounds and movements, and then following up on those sounds and movements. She splayed her hands over his ribs and murmured into his ear, “I reckon you didn’t see who attacked you.”  
  
“No,” Draco gasped. “I don’t—what went into my eyes?” He’d been too involved in his pain to think about it before, but now he had to start wondering if he was going to be blind because of what the attacker had done to him.  
  
“A mixture of inks, from the marks on your face.” Cassidy held a wand over his eyes and murmured something, a healing spell which contained no Latin words Draco recognized. He only knew it was a healing spell because a blessed coolness flooded across his eyes, and he slumped back in relief against the floor of the Labyrinth as the air in front of him brightened and sparked back into cloudy colors. “I didn’t think there were inks that could be mixed that way,” Cassidy continued, her voice light. “I shall have to reconsider.”  
  
Draco was glad to climb to his feet and lean on her. Cassidy would take care of him. More than that, she would make every effort to find the deranged person who had done this and take them apart. This was an illegal attack on the grounds of the Labyrinth. She would consider it an attack against her.  
  
“I—I did think of one thing,” he said, gasping a little, as Cassidy moved the walls of the Labyrinth around them with grumbling sounds so that they could reach the entrance faster. “This was so quick that it had to be someone who was there in the center when I made my announcement. I don’t think someone could have sent an owl, and I know that the fireplaces there don’t permit Floo calls.”  
  
“There are a few other possibilities,” Cassidy said, “such as a telepathy spell. But, yes, at the very least, that would imply that someone who was there tonight knows the identity of the person sending the death threats, because that’s the only reason they would have to spread the news abroad so quickly.”  
  
Draco nodded, and then winced as he stubbed a toe against the wall. He blinked. He was seeing more and more every minute, but “better blurriness” wasn’t really that much better.  
  
“I suppose that the Labyrinth didn’t tell you who it was?” he asked wistfully. He wasn’t sure about how much the magic of the place allowed Cassidy to be in communion with it, but it was reasonable that it might have told her the identity of the attacker as it had told her it was hurt.  
  
“No,” Cassidy said. “I have tried to respect my clients’ privacy, and as every writer is welcome here and many are new, I have not wanted to set up wards that admit only certain people.” She was silent for some moments as they paced around a large corner, and then she added, “I may sharpen the wards.”  
  
For a moment, Draco felt a bit of pity for the mysterious writer.  
  
*  
  
St. Mungo’s released Draco soon enough, saying that Cassidy had done a good job of healing his eyes and that they’d never seen anything like the weapon used on him. It was a mixture of inks, but apparently it had been increased in potency with a chemical from an animal called the Hideous Hopfrog. Draco left them chattering excitedly over it and came home to his tower with a sense of relief.  
  
Justice greeted him with several nips and hoots that suggested he hadn’t been fed enough lately. Draco tossed him a dead mouse and collapsed into his chair, shutting his eyes. The room was swirling around him, and he wanted to go to bed.  
  
But he had a letter to send first. If he kept this knowledge to himself for much longer, then Potter would probably accuse him of being in league with the threatening writer.  
  
Draco snorted and went searching for parchment and ink.  _I could wish that I had that much creativity, to make a weapon out of ink._  
  
He thought about it for a long time, but all the words that came to mind seemed wrong. Then he thought about the way that Potter kept trying to duck out of photographs, and scowling at people who came to look at him, and putting himself out in public anyway, because he believed that his principles should triumph over his discomfort.  
  
Someone like that would best appreciate a simple letter that told him exactly what he needed to know, and had no hint of fawning.  
  
Draco smiled.   
  
 _Dear Potter:  
  
I think that I may have discovered a clue to the identity of the person writing you those letters. I told you that I think it’s an author, and this evening I released several vague accusations—suitably vague enough to protect your identity, I assure you—that I knew someone in our community was causing trouble. I did this at the Writer’s Labyrinth, a well-known gathering place, and in the presence of twenty or thirty people I’m acquainted with at least vaguely. I know the bait was taken, because someone attacked me as I was leaving. I unfortunately didn’t get to see who it was; they hit me in the eyes with an ink-based weapon that blinded me and ran away.   
  
This is the list of the people who were gathered in the Labyrinth last night:_   
  
He put down all the names that Cassidy had mentioned; she had a keen eye and a quick memory, and she’d given him that list before she left St. Mungo’s. Draco didn’t add any notes about who he personally thought was a more likely suspect. At this point, he really didn’t know, in part because he didn’t know who among those people had bought Hell’s Fields Ink or would have access to Hideous Hopfrogs.  
  
When he finished the list, he finished the letter with a simple sentence:  _This should give you the beginnings of an investigation.  
  
Yours,   
Draco Malfoy. _  
  
He felt tremendously purged when he finished, as though he had just accomplished a much more daunting task than a letter. He gave it to Justice, who was gracious enough after the mouse to do no more than hunch when he heard Potter’s name. Draco gave him another mouse to sweeten him up and sent him on his way.  
  
He did examine his eyes in his mirror before he went to bed, since the Healers had said he should, but saw none of the redness or popping veins they had warned him about. Pleased, he fell asleep easily.  
  
*  
  
Someone pounded on the door of his tower.  
  
Draco made sure to have his wand ready to hand when he opened the door. That attacker was not about to take him off-guard twice.  
  
Potter pushed past him, spun around, and stood there glaring at him. Draco blinked. Obviously Potter had received his owl and read it this time, but he had no idea why Potter had come to hunt him down instead of writing him back or ignoring him. He decided that, as the intruder, Potter could speak first.  
  
For long moments, it didn’t seem as though he would. He was breathing harshly instead, his green eyes so bright it almost hurt to look into them. Draco maintained his stare and his silence nonetheless, and finally Potter shook his head.  
  
“You’re stupid. Brave, but stupid.” His voice grated as if it physically pained him to admit what he was going to stay next. “And I could use a contact in the literary community who can investigate this. But only on the condition that you  _promise_  me that you’re not going to write a novel about me.”  
  
“Done,” Draco said simply.  
  
And, in the end, it was painless, because even an unborn story couldn’t compare with the physical reality of Potter here, looking at him with eyes that displayed perplexity and worry and a cautious trust.


	7. Insight

“I do want to know what this mysterious person has been writing to you about.”  
  
Potter tensed when Draco spoke those words, but didn’t look up from the cup of tea in front of him. It had been five minutes since Draco had given him that tea, and yet he hadn’t stopped studying it as if he thought it was poison. It would have to be a slow-acting poison when he’d taken three huge gulps of it, Draco thought.   
  
“You want to know,” Potter said, and finally looked up. His eyes were blank, as if he were trying desperately to mute his emotions behind them so that Draco couldn’t catch a glimpse of what he really thought. “But I don’t want to tell you.”  
  
Draco’s first instinct was to explode. He’d risked his life for Potter and his stupid secrets, and yet Potter still wouldn’t tell him the secret that had started it all? That was unfair, and since this was the only reward that Draco had asked for so far, ungracious of Potter at well.  
  
Luckily, Draco restrained his temper in time. Bursting out now with an angry tirade would only confirm Potter’s worst suspicions of him. He sat on his hands, as well, for some moments, and then said in a calm, fragile voice, “All right. I’ll accept that. But your holding your peace will probably hinder me from helping you fully. How am I supposed to know who the writer is if I don’t have a clue what the secret is? The writers I know would have very different motivations for threatening you depending on that.”  
  
Potter’s look became mulish. “I can tell you enough about this person without that.”  
  
“Really?” Draco raised an eyebrow. “How many of the people on the list I gave you do you know anything about?”  
  
Potter grimaced. “None of them, but—”  
  
“ _None_?” Draco sat forwards and stared at him. He could understand not enjoying some of the fiction that the writers who frequented the Labyrinth produced, and no one under the sun needed any excuse for not enjoying Boot’s or Wrexby’s poetry. But the rest… “Potter, don’t you  _read_?”  
  
Potter flushed and drew himself up into what he probably imagined, wrongly, was a haughty and intimidating stance. “Excuse me for not having much time to read when I’m busy saving the world,” he snapped.  
  
“Oh, come off it.” Draco slapped his hand down on the table between them. Since the table was only about the height of his knees and made of a thick dark wood that absorbed sound, this didn’t produce a very satisfying thunk. He scowled at Potter and surreptitiously shook his hand out behind his back. “I know that you don’t believe your own heroic propaganda. I went back and looked more closely at the old newspaper photographs. You don’t accept any of it, do you? Not the accolades that other people try to heap on you for killing Voldemort, and not the reputation you’ve gained as an Auror.”  
  
Potter sat up and stared at him. “I didn’t realize that you’d managed to persuade yourself to say his name,” he said.  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s been sixteen years, Potter. Of course I say it. Now, to return to the more important subject. How is it possible that you’ve lived in our world for those sixteen years and never managed to read a single word written by any of those authors?”  
  
Potter shifted his shoulders defensively. “I read newspapers,” he muttered. “I read file reports. And I read that novel you wrote about Hermione. I think that’s enough to qualify me as literate.”  
  
Draco snapped his mouth shut, choking on the words that he would have spoken next. His mind had arrayed Potter in such solid opposition to doing anything that would have pleased Draco that he hadn’t expected Potter to touch his books. “You liked  _Fire in the Darkness_?” he asked at last, pleased that his voice didn’t tremble.  
  
“I said that I  _read_  it,” Potter said, rubbing his scar. Draco felt offended. If there was anyone in the room with an excuse for a headache, it was him. Potter was sidetracking the conversation and still refusing to tell him anything that Draco could use to prevent the threatening letter writer from striking again. “That doesn’t imply liking, you know. I could have hated it and torn it up.”  
  
“People who did that sneer in a particular way when they say they’ve read something,” Draco responded instantly. “I should know.” He’d encountered the tall Weasley who worked in Gringotts more than once, and he had that kind of sneer when he talked about Draco’s work. “I think you finished that particular book. I think you liked it.”  
  
Potter clenched his hands on the teacup until Draco feared he would shatter it. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to taunt Potter when he was near Draco’s possessions.  
  
“I finished it,” Potter said in a low voice. “I…respected it. I wouldn’t say that I liked it. I like Hermione better than you do.” He stared into Draco’s eyes. “Is that why you write about the particular subjects you do? Is it a way of getting revenge on the people who were on the opposite side during the war?”  
  
Draco stared at him, then snorted. “Yes, Potter. I write about the people I hate as heroes.”  
  
“Hermione—I mean, Millhouse wasn’t a heroine.” Potter shook his head. “You made her into this hard, cold, angry person, determined to do what she wants at any cost. I don’t see Hermione that way.”  
  
Draco smiled a bit and leaned back against his chair. This was an old objection, one that Angela had given him when she first became his copy-editor. Draco’s explanation had satisfied her, and she was a much more critical reader than Potter; he thought his words should please Potter as well. “And do you not think that someone looking at Granger from the outside might see her that way? She’s determined to free the house-elves at any cost, even though she faces rather a lot of opposition from the Ministry. She’s often hard and cold to people who aren’t her friends. As to that anger—well, I do stir some creativity into the mix, you know, or I would be writing biography and history instead. I don’t know how often Granger is angry. But she admitted to me that she was angry often during the war. I simply made Astraea angry about different things.” Draco shrugged and sipped at his tea. “I’m  _distant_  from all my characters, Potter, but I’m also fair to them. I sympathize with them. That doesn’t prevent me from seeing how wrong they are most of the time. If you fall in love with a character, then what you write are those horrid sticky romances that most people won’t admit to reading. Nothing is too good for that character, and because the writer is the god of the story, he can give them whatever they want. But I prefer writing stories that I don’t have to shower afterwards.”  
  
When he finished, he found that Potter’s eyes were indeed fixed on him, but not with the emotions he had expected. Angela had looked thoughtful. Some of the other people he’d explained that to, usually those he wanted to become the protagonists of future novels, were flattered and required more elucidation to flatter them further. Potter looked…  
  
Puzzled.  
  
 _Were the words too big for him_? Draco wondered, and opened his mouth to repeat himself. But Potter interrupted him with a soft confused tone.  
  
“I don’t—Malfoy, the person I knew you as during the war would never have become someone who could do that.”  
  
“It’s all right, Potter,” Draco told him kindly. “Since you work with the Aurors and don’t read, I rather assume that your world has been deficient in experiences of seeing people grow up.”  
  
Potter made a rude gesture with both hands at once. “I’m serious,” he said. “What made you become a writer? Why in the world would you want to make someone into a hero of your novels? Why would you—why would you pick  _me_?”  
  
Draco thought for a moment about bringing the topic of the conversation back to the threatening letters, but he enjoyed talking about himself too much to do that immediately. Besides, since Potter was so reluctant to give Draco any of the information he needed, perhaps it would sweeten him up if Draco pretended to ignore that for a while and instead gave Potter what he wanted. At the very least, he should have more reason to trust Draco if Draco stripped his heart naked the way he had wanted Potter to do.  
  
“Not because you’re the most famous hero from the war,” he said. “I was surprised myself at how long it had taken me to think of you once the idea came to me.”  
  
Potter jerked his head in a sharp nod. He wasn’t taking his gaze from Draco, and Draco had to resist the temptation to preen. Potter didn’t seem to like conceited people.  
  
“I became a writer because I wanted a way to make sense of my memories,” Draco said. “The war was  _chaos_. I didn’t expect that. The battles I read about were planned. The history my father taught me always made sense of all the motivations and justifications after the fact. I thought any intelligent, rational person would plan a war against the Muggleborns in the same way.” He laughed at the expression on Potter’s face. “Yes, I know that Voldemort wasn’t rational, but my father made him sound so grand that I simply invested him with every virtue. Meeting him was quite a shock.  
  
“And then my life was a carousel of fear and horror and being forced to do things I didn’t want to do. I hated that most of all. If I could have achieved one solid point, one place to stand that would make people react to me in predictable ways, one deed in the eyes of Voldemort that would keep my parents safe and give me back some of my self-respect, I could have endured all the rest of it. But I was thrown from fragmented moment to fragmented moment instead.  
  
“I thought there  _had_  to be people out there whose experiences made more sense.” Draco rubbed his finger down his jaw and smiled wryly. Potter was staring at him, enthralled, and with a touch of awe that Draco thought probably came from hearing him recite his experiences so smoothly. Draco wondered what he would say if he knew that Draco had sat down years ago, with three novels existing, and carefully written out the narrative of his own experiences so that he would have a story to tell if he wanted.   
  
 _Words are my tools, Potter. Is it really all that surprising that I can encapsulate reality within them?_  
  
“There were. Or I could  _make_  those people exist. I started talking to heroes I thought I could safely approach, like Dean Thomas, whose experiences were potentially powerful but also peripheral. It was a slow process. I had to learn how to coax them to talk to me. It was the thought of the story that kept me going, that taught me how to conduct interviews. Everything, for me, serves the story, Potter. I come up with plot and character and arc of emotion as one connected whole. None can make sense in isolation. They exist only in relation to one another.”  
  
Draco’s voice soared with his passion, and for a moment, as Potter’s brows contracted, he thought Potter might make fun of him. But then he said, in a voice that rattled like thrown dice, “And so you’re going to make  _me_  serve your story as well. I see.”  
  
Draco took a deep breath. He hadn’t wanted to say this so soon, because he was desperately hoping that there was still a way he could write his novel and not alienate Potter. But the words rushed through his lips as they did through his quill and his fingers when he was caught up in the climax of a tale. “I’ve decided not to make you into a figure in a book. You’re different from the rest. They needed to tell their stories, or have someone else tell them, so they could make sense of their experiences. But your story’s been told again and again, and I can only imagine that you’re sick of it. I’ll pass this time, and let you tell it in your own words, to yourself and whoever else needs to hear it.”  
  
Potter sat so still that Draco feared for his breathing. Then his hand closed down on the teacup, and it creaked. Draco stirred uneasily. This was a matching set his mother had given him for his last birthday, and if Potter broke one of the cups when Draco hadn’t even had it a year…  
  
“Are you real?” Potter whispered. “You can’t be. What you said sounds too understandable.”  
  
Draco felt glad for the chance to throw his hands up. Potter confused him to the point that he didn’t  _want_  solemnity in their interactions. Potter was too solemn for his own good as it was. If he was sensible, he would have sought out help among his friends and solved the problem of the letter writer ages ago. “Make up your mind, Potter. You ask me for the truth, and then you declare it must be a lie. If I told you a lie, you would accuse me of deception and probably say that all authors do that. Just because I’m telling you that I think you should write your own story doesn’t give you permission to reshape mine.”  
  
Potter set the teacup down on the table in front of him, carefully. Draco was at least glad that it would escape his wrath, should he go mad. “I don’t—I didn’t expect you to sound so understandable and reasonable, that’s all,” Potter whispered, and passed a hand over his face as if he sought to banish the shadows of sleeplessness and fear. “I still don’t know everything about you, but I do feel as if you could have become the person that you’re telling me you did since the war.”  
  
“How nice of you,” Draco said, and leaned back against the chair again. He needed some distance between him and Potter right now, physical if not emotional. “Listen, about the letter writer, I need to know when you began to receive—”  
  
“I see things,” Potter said suddenly.  
  
Draco blinked and peered at Potter from behind his fringe. He was sitting up with his hands clenched in front of him, like someone trying to hold onto hope. Draco reluctantly put the image in the back of his head to use for a minor character, since he had promised not to base a major one on Potter. “What?”  
  
“I see things,” Potter repeated. He licked his lips. “I handled the Resurrection Stone during the war, and I was briefly the master of all three of the Deathly Hallows. I’m—I saw the shades of my parents and their closest friends. That’s what the letter writer somehow found out about, although  _how_  I don’t know. And since then, I’ve also—I see death, all right? I usually know when someone’s going to die. I see the world of death that flickers behind the world of life.” He shut his eyes.  
  
Draco gaped at him for a few minutes. Then he caught his breath and said kindly, “I think that would make a wonderful idea for a story, but you’re really not making very much sense.  _What_  do you see?” He knew that Potter would probably do better with a slightly hectoring tone right now than a purely gentle one, and sure enough, Potter shook his hair out of his eyes and looked at Draco defiantly.  
  
“I see death,” he said again. “That’s one reason that I’m such a good Auror. I see grey outlines flickering around people’s hands when they’ve committed a murder. I see a gray aura replace their shadows when they’re on the verge of death themselves. I can anticipate and prevent some of those deaths, and I can catch murderers.” He licked his lips again and looked up at the ceiling, as if that would somehow lessen the weight of Draco’s fascinated stare.  
  
“The world of death—it’s hard to describe. But it’s like this world is just a veil that covers others.” He gave Draco a distrustful glance. “I’m sure that you’ve heard and used that saying before, literary person that you are.”  
  
“Heard it,” Draco said promptly. “Never used it. You couldn’t persuade me to write a character who would speak in such clichés.”  _Not now, at least_. He hoped fervently that Potter would never read  _Self-Portrait With Roses_.   
  
Potter did smile at that, though the expression was hard and wary. “There are other worlds that I can only catch glimpses of, instead of seeing into,” he murmured. “But the dead—I can hear their voices when they welcome someone who’s newly dead among them. I can see a black sun that rises when ours sets, and immense volcanic plains stretching into the distance, and trees that have what I think are black peaches. And there’s a trio of silver moons, and shadows that eat souls and spit them out again, and wheels that blaze with fire and rotate with shades of the dead strapped to them. I think those are the people condemned to relive every incident of their lives.” Potter shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. “I’ve seen those visions again and again, and they were so consistent I thought they had to be real. But—but there’s nothing in the research about someone who’s held the Deathly Hallows being able to do that, and just because the visions are consistent doesn’t mean anything. What if I  _am_  going mad, and I’ve been doing that slowly for the last sixteen years?”  
  
Draco tried hard to set his fascination aside and concentrate on what Potter was saying. He would have liked to ask more questions about the world of the dead, and would have had his viewpoint character do so if he was writing a novel about this, but Potter was a real person, not a character.  
  
 _That is, in fact, most of the problem_ , he acknowledged to himself, and asked, “Did you think that you were going mad only because of the letters? Or did you have some idea before that?”  
  
“It’s a fear I’ve had as long as I can remember,” Potter said slowly. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, and Draco thought he was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when the fear started. Draco was impressed. A memory that good, and the skill to use it, was not something he would have credited Potter with before. “When I was a child, and something freakish happened to me, I didn’t know it was accidental magic, because I didn’t have any idea magic existed. I thought I must have imagined it when my relatives refused to talk about it, in fact.”  
  
Draco swallowed his drool. Potter was letting Draco into his memories without struggle this time. “And when you were at Hogwarts?”  
  
Potter gave him a long, slow, sardonic look. “The  _Prophet_  ran regular articles on how I was losing my mind. What do you think?”  
  
Draco nodded to show that he should have guessed that, and proceeded. “And have your fears grown sharper since you used the Resurrection Stone?”  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. “Of course. But I had managed to keep them to a manageable level until I started receiving these letters. A month and a half ago,” he added, when Draco leaned forwards and stared at him expectantly. “Always delivered by the same golden owl. I’ve never seen that breed of bird before, and I haven’t been able to learn anything about it.”  
  
“Not unexpected,” Draco murmured. His mind was working hard. The letter writer couldn’t simply want to reveal Potter’s secret, because the most effective course in that case would have been to go the papers. “Have any of the letters included a demand for money, or an interview?”  
  
“I could have dealt with them better if they had!” Potter rose to his feet and paced back and forth, staring at the stone walls of Draco’s tower as if he thought they would grow horrid mushrooms at any moment. “At least then I would have some idea of what to  _expect_. Instead, what I have is a steady stream of letters that seem to torment me for the sake of tormenting.” He whirled around to face Draco. “I’ve told no one because I would have to explain the situation, and other people  _would_  believe that I’m going mad.”  
  
“Including your friends?” Draco gave him a skeptical glance. “I might not like Granger much, but she’s devoted to your interests. I doubt she would let you go to St. Mungo’s if she could do something to stop it” In the interests of diplomacy, he decided, he would say nothing about Weasley.  
  
Potter gave him the ghost of a smile. “I told them a few things, enough to give them a few clues. But I never found the words I needed to tell the full story.” The smile grew stronger, and Draco suspected Potter had chosen that phrasing deliberately, to appeal to the writer in Draco. He wondered if he should be flattered or insulted, and in the end settled on a mixture of both. “Except to you.”  
  
Draco bowed his head and said nothing for long minutes. His tongue had swollen, or felt as if it had swollen, so that it seemed to fill his mouth. The honor Potter had done him was great enough that his head hurt.  
  
“And I’ve only done that because I think you can help me,” Potter went on briskly, as if he sensed Draco’s emotions and wanted to dissipate them. “So. Any ideas? Why would someone torture me in silence about this secret instead of selling it to the highest bidder?”  
  
“Because it’s too unbelievable?” Draco asked, but ended up shaking his head. “No. I believed it.”  
  
“Yes, you did,” Potter said, in a tone with a challenge underneath it, as if to say that believing his words suggested nothing commendable about Draco.  
  
Draco flapped a hand at him, still tracing the list of names that Cassidy had given him over in his head. “And you have no idea where you might have met any of these writers, where they might have learned the secret?”  
  
Potter gave him the most tired look in the world. “I meet a lot of people at all sorts of functions, Malfoy. No. I can only tell you that I’m sure I didn’t arrest any of them. I would have remembered that.”  
  
“Do you have the letter I sent to you here?” Draco asked. Potter nodded. Draco held out his hand, and Potter gave it over, scarcely demurring. Draco noted that with wonder as he unfolded the paper. A little easy self-exposure, and suddenly Potter seemed almost to trust Draco.   
  
He began to run his eyes down the list, relaxing his mind as he did when he was contemplating an outline for a novel, trying to let what he knew about each writer rise to the forefront of his mind as he looked at their names and blend with the information that Potter had given him.  
  
 _Terry Boot. Gabriel Wrexby. Yolanda Timpany—_  
  
Draco froze.  
  
“You have something,” Potter said, in the intent tone of a hunter talking to another hunter. “What is it? What have you found?”  
  
Draco lifted one hand to stop him, while his mind spun in silence through what he could recall of Yolanda. He had never tried to know her that well, but of course he had read her stories. She wrote about madmen—  
  
 _Of course._  
  
Draco looked up at Potter. “I think it’s Yolanda Timpany,” he said. “And she’s either interested in your madness because that’s what she tends to write about, or in the fact that you’re a prominent public figure, because she likes to ruin them.”  
  
Potter’s nails rasped on the table, and then he said, “I don’t think you have any proof of this.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “No. Just intuition.” He felt a faint pulse of indignation that he had no intention of showing to Potter.  _Someone else had the idea of writing about him before I did?_    
  
Potter’s face went through several contortions before he settled on disgust. “ _Another_  bloody writer trying to corral me,” he said. “But her harping on my madness doesn’t make much sense, if she already knew about it. She could have gone ahead and included in a story that would ruin me.” He looked up. “I’m glad that you decided not to write about me.”  
  
Surveying the battle-fire that burned in Potter’s eyes, Draco had to agree that it was one of the luckier decisions he’d made.


	8. Intuition

“You don’t have any proof.”  
  
Potter had continued  _saying_  that, even as he admitted that he had no better guess than Yolanda for who might be sending those letters to him. So, Draco thought, as he shifted his shoulders against the wall he was hiding behind, this risk made sense. They had to get some definite proof she was behind threatening Potter and tossing ink into his eyes.   
  
Breaking into her house, as Draco had first proposed, was apparently out of the question. So was slipping her Veritaserum, his second suggestion, and casting a curse on her that would make her start babbling everything she thought about Potter.  
  
 _Working with an Auror is discouragingly narrow_ , Draco thought, as he poked his head cautiously towards the street. No sign of Yolanda yet.  _His ideas about morality take over from his common sense. That last curse isn’t even illegal, for Merlin’s sake._    
  
Of course, when Draco volunteered to put his life in danger in order to find the information, Potter was all for it, even though he also cautioned Draco not to do anything stupid. Probably the way to Potter’s heart was to act like a Gryffindor, which explained why he’d come charging to Draco’s tower when he heard about the attack.  
  
Draco took a deep breath and reminded himself that Potter was waiting around the corner at the other end of the street, within easy shouting distance, in case Yolanda attacked him now. He would also serve as a silent witness to everything that happened, so if she mentioned anything incriminating, she couldn’t get away with it by killing Draco.  
  
 _Of course, that’s not much of a comfort to me, if I’m already dead._  
  
Draco shifted his weight again. Why was he doing this? It might have made sense for someone he was going to write about, but prudence and his own reluctant decision had ensured that  _that_  wasn’t going to happen.  
  
He was given no more time to ponder the question. Yolanda Timpany stepped out from between two houses and began to walk towards her own. She didn’t look to left or right, her eyes aimed straight ahead. After a close glance at them, though, Draco doubted she was seeing anything  _there_ , either. Her gaze looked distant and focused inwards.  
  
 _Probably coming up with new ways to drive Potter mad_. Draco shivered, reminded himself again of Potter’s close proximity and that he was as daring and strong as Yolanda was, and then stepped out into her path.  
  
She halted and looked at him with that lack of expression she had apparently perfected years ago. Draco offered her a smarmy smile. “Yolanda. I had something to talk to you about. Do you mind if I walk with you?”  
  
There was a long pause before she answered, which was usual with her. She always seemed to concentrate to come up with words, as if they were alien objects that she handled with care. Spoken words, at least. Draco had read enough of her stories to know how facile she was with a quill. “I am almost home. Speak with me later.”  
  
Draco conjured up a twisted smile and tucked his hands behind his head with an elaborately casual stretch. “Alas, I’m afraid that I can’t. You see, I know about the  _gold_  mine that you’re trying to dig up with your references to certain  _visions_. That makes it urgent that I talk to you before I have the temptation to spread the words to someone else’s ears.”  
  
Yolanda’s stare drilled into him. Draco tried not to shiver as he thought about the people whose reputations she had ruined.  _You have Potter nearby_ , he reminded himself.  _And you know as much about words as she does._    
  
“I adore riddling talk,” Yolanda said at last, in a whisper that sounded as if it came from snakes’ scales. “But not yours. That is strange.”  
  
“Well, usually, the riddling talk isn’t directed against you.” Draco gave her a bland look and stepped forwards. “I’m sure you’ll agree that being cornered isn’t pleasant. Not that you mind doing it to others,” he added. He couldn’t leave any doubt that he knew about her actions against Potter—if she really was the guilty one.  
  
Yolanda stood there, straight and slender as a pillar, never glancing away from him. Draco stared back, fascinated. It was easy to imagine her as a statue with a carved mask in the place of a face.   
  
 _Easy, and fatal_ , he reminded himself.  _She’s dangerous. Never forget that and start thinking that she’s an inanimate object._    
  
In the end, she lowered her gaze and gave the slightest smile. She had decided to bluff it out, Draco saw when she spoke her next words. “I would enjoy being cornered, as no one has ever managed to do it to me. But alas for you and me both, you have not managed it.”  
  
Draco surveyed her as if he doubted his own eyes, then sighed. “Really? Despite what I know about golden owls, and letters that make references to seeing things, and the Hideous Hopfrog?” He shook his head and turned away. “An easy mistake to make, I reckon. I apologize for taking up your time. Now I must go and seek to pour my words into the ears of someone who will be more open to hearing them.”  
  
Her hand landed on his shoulder and clenched down, her long nails biting into his skin. Draco kept his eyes turned away as he smiled. By the time he turned around again, he had made sure that his face was as grave as a judge’s. “Yes? Did you wish to speak words of farewell to me? I assure you, they aren’t necessary.”  
  
Yolanda gave him a few moments’ scrutiny in silence. Then she said, “Every writer wants an audience. You have found a temporary one in me. But I would speak quickly. Information, unlike other forms of speech, is dependent on time for its value.”  
  
“That’s true,” Draco said, widening his eyes into moons and his mouth into a gape as if he were struck by the wisdom of what she’d said. “However, maybe you’re not the audience I want. There is someone who would pay more for this information.”  
  
Yolanda’s fingers became almost gentle. Draco held back a shudder with an effort, since she was still looking at him as if she was an owl and he was a mouse. “You and I,” she said, lowering her voice further, “we are artists. We do what we do for love of the craft and not of Galleons. Which would make the better audience? The one who will listen to you more attentively, or the one who would hand you a few coins for information like a common spy?”  
  
 _That might even have tempted me, if I was the same person I was a few days ago,_  Draco thought ruefully. “You have a point there,” he said, and darted a glance over his shoulder. “But I don’t feel comfortable speaking to you in the middle of the street. A more private place—”  
  
“You are welcome to the hospitality of my home.” Yolanda smiled in a way that Draco thought would guarantee her few guests. Of course, maybe she liked it that way. From what he knew of Yolanda, she spent most of her time alone, writing her stories and unerringly picking the best markets to send them to. The rumor was that she hadn’t had a story rejected more than once in years.  
  
Draco managed a flat look. “From what I know of you,” he said, “you’re not only the better audience, you’re the more dangerous one. Forgive me for not wanting to step onto your ground immediately.”  
  
Yolanda’s eyebrows rose and stayed raised. “You have a point,” she said. “I find you intriguing, Draco Malfoy, with your mixture of riddling talk and plain common sense. Yes, I will agree to meet you elsewhere, but it must be in a day’s time. I have an important mission to accomplish first.”  
  
“What is that?” Draco asked. It would fit the character he was playing with her to ask boldly.  
  
Yolanda’s smile rose from the left side of her lips and twined across her face. It was like watching a creeper grow in small leaps of time, Draco thought. “Finishing a story. I am sure you know the impulse.”  
  
Draco nodded. He often completed the last chapters of novels like  _The Hope-Well_  in a single day, because he could feel the story in him shoving on to the end, a relentless pressure that made him uncomfortable and restless if he attempted anything else. “I must let you go, then,” he said, and released her arm. “Perhaps we might meet in the Three Broomsticks tomorrow?” That should easily be public enough for Potter to follow them without Yolanda’s noticing.  
  
“I prefer the Hog’s Head,” she said at once. “Three-o’clock in the afternoon would be the most convenient for me.”  
  
Draco bowed, although he would have preferred to set the time. “For me as well. I do most of my writing in the mornings.”  
  
“We are matched in that one respect.” Yolanda gave him a bright look that vanished in the next moment as if she’d ended a  _Lumos_  Charm. She turned towards her house. “I look forwards to speaking with you tomorrow, Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
Draco waited until she was in the house, waving wildly with one hand when she turned to look back at him in the doorway. For a moment, she stared, and he thought there was throbbing hatred behind her eyes. But as with everything that Yolanda Timpany did, it was hard to tell, and he was reluctant to press more closely in case she turned on him and made him into a character in her stories.  
  
Draco paused.   
  
 _I wondered what her motivation could be for going after Potter. But that’s the most likely one, isn’t it? That she writes about madmen, and she’s trying to make him into one so that she can write about him more easily._  
  
Draco curled his lip. Yes, his writing and Yolanda’s shared some similarities; it gained part of its depth and resonance form the reader being able to identify the people it was based on. But Draco had always made sure his novels stood alone, so that if someone didn’t know enough of the history to recognize the model for his hero, at least he or she would get to enjoy a good story. It seemed that Yolanda could not do that.   
  
 _And why should she? She writes satire. She destroys reputations if she can, because those people have irritated her or she has decided it would be fun to do so. Her mode of writing is fundamentally different from mine._    
  
Draco Apparated back home to his tower, comfortably secure in his reasons to despise Yolanda. He might have to fear her as a conspirator and the person who had almost blinded him; he had no reason to respect her art.  
  
*  
  
“I don’t think your conversation with her constitutes evidence.”  
  
Draco sighed and tapped his foot against the floor. The reality of Auror work, he thought, was disappointing compared to the risks that he’d had his Auror characters undertake when he needed them to: daring rebellions against the letter of the law to preserve its spirit, whirlwind-like leaps of intuition, the convenient finding of clues that would point straight to one suspect. “But you agree that it was incriminating, at least?”  
  
Potter leaned back against Draco’s couch. “Yes. Of course it was that.”  
  
His face was private and closed again, the way it hadn’t been since yesterday. Draco wondered if he was regretting the plan that would let Draco lure Yolanda into a confession. “Then why can’t it count as evidence?”  
  
“All we know is that Timpany appeared to recognize your allusions.” Potter could do a massive shrug; Draco wondered why he had never noticed how broad Potter’s shoulders had got in the last few years. “That may be proof she’s involved, but not the person who’s writing the letters to me or the one who attacked you, only their friend or accomplice. Or she may be thinking of something else altogether and it’s a coincidence that your words seemed to reference it.”  
  
Draco stared steadily at him. “You don’t really believe that.”  
  
Potter frowned. Some of the fire had come back into his eyes, which Draco was glad to see. Conversing with someone who acted perfectly calm about everything Yolanda had done to him was not his idea of a good way to defeat her. It just meant that Potter would probably go mad later and fire a curse at her when Draco was in the midst of setting up a particularly sticky trap for her to fall into. “No, I don’t. But I need evidence that will satisfy my superiors if they ever ask to see a report on this.”  
  
Draco scowled. “Why?”  
  
Potter gave him a faint smile. “Because, Malfoy, like it or not, I’m still an Auror. I don’t stop being one because I’m not in the office at the moment. I need to give Timpany the same consideration I would any other criminal, no matter what her crimes against me are.”  
  
“I’m glad I’m not writing the book about you now,” Draco said, shaking his head. “I would break my mind trying to force myself to understand the way you view the world.”  
  
For some reason, that caused Potter to give him a pleased look. Draco was unaware that having your mind called strange and broken constituted a compliment in Potter’s universe, but then, he was slowly learning just how many things he didn’t know about Potter.  
  
“But that’s not what I meant,” Draco said, returning to his original line of thought because that one was unfruitful. “I meant that you aren’t investigating Timpany through official channels. You never reported her letters to anyone else in the Auror office, do you? So this isn’t a criminal matter. It’s a personal one, and you should be able to decide if we have enough evidence for you and punish her on the basis of that.”  
  
Potter closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Talking with you gives me a headache, Malfoy,” he muttered.  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows. “It’s not my fault that you don’t read and so your brain is bombarded by larger words than normal for it when you spend time in my company.”  
  
Potter concealed a snort that might have been a laugh. For some reason, it seemed important to him not to laugh in front of Draco. “Not that. I meant that you tempt me horribly to do exactly as you say.” He opened one eye and fixed Draco with a wry stare. “If you can’t understand the way I would approach this, I can understand  _your_  way of doing things all too well.”  
  
“Sometimes,” Draco said brightly, “temptation is so brilliant and so persistent that it simply distracts one. Yield to it, and I’ve found that the temptation vanishes and leaves one free to think about other things.”  
  
“And sometimes,” Potter said, “people who say things like that are only looking to win some sort of special dispensation for themselves.” He went on before Draco could do more than press one hand to his heart and look injured. “No. I won’t treat this as a special situation. You’ve set up the appointment with Timpany in the Hog’s Head. Good enough. I’ll accompany you and watch carefully in case she tries anything.”  
  
“You’ll be in disguise, of course,” Draco said.  _If I don’t mention it, it’s possible that he would show up looking like himself because that would somehow be more “honorable.”_  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. “What do you take me for? They didn’t spend time teaching us Stealth and Tracking in Auror training for nothing. Yes, I’ll be there in disguise.” He grinned suddenly at Draco, who felt as though the grin were a punch in the chest. “That disguise will be s good that not even  _you_  will be able to spot me.”  
  
Draco licked his lips. “Care to make a bet on that?”  
  
“So long as we’re not betting anything illegal or using Dark Arts to secure the wager,” Potter replied automatically.  
  
Draco sighed. “Someday, you need to stop being an Auror and start living a bit,” he said, and stretched out one hand before Potter’s outraged splutters could begin. “Of course not. I know a harmless spell that will cause intense itching if one of us doesn’t keep the bargain. Clasp my hand and repeat the incantation with me.”  
  
Potter didn’t reach out to him, instead giving him a narrow-eyed look that filled Draco’s brain with fire.  
  
“You trusted me with your deepest secret,” he snapped, “the one Yolanda’s been using to torture you for months, the one you admitted that you hadn’t told in all its glorious detail even to your best friends. After that, you’re going to balk at  _this_?”  
  
“It’s the spell I’m balking at,” Potter muttered, “not the bet.” But at least he looked properly ashamed of himself, and reached out until his hand clasped Draco’s. Draco arranged their hands carefully so that they were in the proper position, fingers fully entwined and palms upright rather than parallel. The way that Potter patiently moved his fingers where Draco directed, only snorting and muttering comments under his breath instead of trying to pull away, gave him a secret thrill.  
  
Once that was done, Draco cleared his throat importantly and lifted his free hand to tap their fingers with his wand. “ _Solido quipped_ ,” he whispered, and the spell coiled around their wrists in shining silver bands that Draco knew looked like manacles. As anticipated, Potter shifted uneasily in his chair and tugged a little.  
  
“What does that mean?” he asked. “It looks a bit too much like an Unbreakable Vow for my taste.”  
  
“It’s not,” Draco said peacefully, never taking his eyes from the bonds of the spell. “You ought to know that I would never be stupid enough to use an Unbreakable Vow for something like this, given how much chaos Vows have caused in my life.”  
  
Potter flinched, but a moment later a thoughtful expression crept across his face and he nodded. “Yes, I should have thought of that,” he said. “Carry on, Malfoy.”  
  
Draco did his best not to gape. He thought it was the first time one of his insults had ever produced something positive where Potter was concerned. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “We’re going to make a bet that I can spot Harry in his disguise at the Hog’s Head. If I can do it, then Harry owes me an evening of conversation where he talks about himself honestly and  _without_  disguises of any kind.”  
  
Potter made a sound that combined a laugh and a sigh of disgust. “What should I ask first? Why you’re demanding that stake or why you’re calling me by my first name?”  
  
“The spell demands first names.” Draco looked up and, boldly, into his eyes. Potter was looking at him with slightly downturned mouth and a very wide, very earnest gaze, but it didn’t look as though he was about to pull away. That was enough for Draco. “As for the other, I’m not going to write or publish a book about you, but I  _do_  want to know about you. All about you.” He lowered his voice and leaned forwards a bit. He didn’t know the exact nature of his attraction to Potter, but it existed and wanted to be indulged. That was good enough for him, especially because it was probably the most morally harmless thing he wanted of Potter.  
  
Potter coughed and looked vaguely uncomfortable. Then he nodded and said, “I accept the stake from—Draco.”  
  
Draco stared back at the silver ropes coiling around his wrists so that he could avoid showing his surprise and his avid desire for Potter to say his name again. “The spell accepts what you have promised,” he said. “And what is the stake you’ll demand, Harry?”  
  
For a moment, Potter licked his lips and fidgeted, so that Draco thought he would never make his demand before the spell faded. But in the end, he said, “All right. If Draco can’t spot me when I’m in disguise, then I want him to spend an evening with me learning what Auror work is really like.”   
  
Draco sat still, stunned. Potter glared at him from the corner of one eye and added defensively, “Well, you got  _all_  the details wrong in your book about Hermione, you know.”  
  
 _It’s better to move on before he changes his mind and demands something harder to fulfill_. Draco said, “I accept the stake from Harry,” and the spell shone and tied them more tightly still. For a long moment, their hands were one glowing mass of silver. Then the light dissipated, and Potter drew his fingers free slowly, looking back and forth between Draco and himself as if he couldn’t believe that was all there was to the spell.  
  
“Tell me more about why you wanted a conversation with me,” Potter said at once. “After all, you’ve been having conversations with me for two days now.”  
  
“Yes, but those have been focused on strategy, what we should do about Yolanda and what kinds of secrets she might have found out from you.” Draco waved his hand, keeping his voice light and airy. Let Potter start suspecting this was important to Draco, and there was no knowing what he would demand. “I want to know more about you. A conversation seems like the best way to do it.”  
  
“I don’t grant interviews.” Potter said that through a polite smile, if you counted someone who looked as if he’d like to tear out your throat as polite.  
  
“And I  _know_  that,” Draco countered, with a noble sigh. “This is a talk, not an interview. I won’t use any of the details that you tell me. I just want to know more. Haven’t you ever felt a devouring curiosity, even when you knew the information wouldn’t be useful to you?”  
  
Potter flushed and looked down at his hands. “Yes,” he said, so softly that Draco only knew what the word was because he was familiar with Potter’s past history. “But I can’t comprehend why I should have become an object of curiosity for you.”  
  
“Don’t ask  _me_.” Draco rolled his eyes. “My mind chooses the oddest subjects to want to know more about.” And that was the truth, as far as it went. After all, a nebulous desire to get closer to Potter didn’t count as a reason.  
  
Potter looked up and spent a few moments studying him. Draco met his scrutiny blandly. “I wasn’t lying,” he said, when that had gone on for a while. “I won’t use this meeting as an interview.”  
  
“I know,” Potter murmured, rising to his feet. “I was looking for something else.”  
  
Of course, he was out the door before Draco could ask him what that something was.   
  
 _Maybe he doesn’t know any more than I do_ , Draco decided, staring after him and trying to decide how he felt about making such an impression on Harry Potter. 


	9. Illusion

Draco eyed the Hog’s Head with resignation. Not even the prosperity that the end of the war had brought to the pub—it seemed that quite a few people wanted to drink in a place where the barman was someone who had saved Harry Potter’s life—could change things in it. The smell of goats, which always reminded Draco of rotting grain and feces mixed, drifted from the planked walls. The signboard still carried a hog’s head bleeding onto a field of white, but someone had painted several long and dripping strands of blood on the bottom, so realistic that Draco felt a little faint as he looked at them.  
  
 _Needs must_ , he told himself, subtly casting a spell on his face that should repel the worst of the scent before he reached out to open the door.  _Think of it as atmosphere. Surely you could set the beginning of a novel here?_    
  
Of course, the moment he started thinking about that, he was at a loss for a hero, with Potter unavailable to him. Draco sighed. Wading through his life was indeed wading through a sea of troubles, a phrase he had seen in one of Yolanda’s stories last night and liked.  
  
The inside of the pub was so dingy that Draco had to feel gingerly in front of himself with his foot, to ensure that he didn’t stumble over something. As it was, he fell over the small step coming down into the main room and straightened himself with a flush and a clearing of his throat. Hostile glances darted at him, then wandered away.  
  
 _It’s not fair that Potter has such an advantage in disguising himself_ , Draco thought in disgust, turning his head in several directions as he walked across the floor of the main room. The patrons all wore their cloaks over their faces, as usual. They all hunched over their drinks, as usual, and communicated in grunts when Aberforth Dumbledore brought them more drinks, as usual. Potter could walk in here wearing his own face and probably no one would notice.  
  
Draco restrained his own exaggeration as he scanned the room for Yolanda. Yes, they would notice, and a nervous ripple would no doubt run through the ones who were here in defiance of the exile laws or to trade dragons’ eggs or other illegal goods. He would have to rely on the ripple to warn him if someone came in who was dangerous to him personally, instead of faces.  
  
 _Atmosphere, remember_ , he told himself, and did his best to look confident as he strutted over to Yolanda’s table and gave her a curt nod.  
  
Yolanda nodded back. She had secured a table in the corner, where she could watch the doors and the few smudged windows simultaneously. A long cloak draped over her shoulders and fell in graceful folds about her hands, but left her face bare, so that Draco didn’t see much point to her disguise. Her drink sat in front of her, a mug full of evil-smelling red liquid that Draco contemplated with dismay. He didn’t relish sitting across from her for an hour or however long this conversation would take and breathing in those fumes.  
  
Draco tossed his own cloak around the back of his chair and sat down with an ostentatiously direct stare into Yolanda’s eyes. She would need to believe that he was guileless, or at least it would be best if she did, for his and Potter’s tricks to work. And it would also help if she could believe that he was a bit stupid, the way that someone trying to blackmail a powerful and dangerous person would be.  
  
 _If she’s that powerful and dangerous person_. It bothered Draco that he and Potter had as yet discovered no method by which Yolanda could have found out Potter’s secrets, though Potter had admitted to meeting her two or three times at Ministry functions.  
  
Yolanda stared back at him. Draco went on looking until he felt his eyes water, and then jumped as the gruff voice of Aberforth sounded in his ear.  
  
“What yer havin’?”  
  
 _Good God, his diction has declined_. Draco restrained a shudder and nodded at him. “Firewhisky.”  
  
“Puling boy’s drink,” Aberforth declared, and wandered off in the direction of the bar. Draco sighed. He had chosen Firewhisky because it was strong enough to drown out the taste of the phantom goats and dirt that haunted the bar, but not strong enough to strip his throat clean of its lining. Of course, no matter what he chose, Aberforth would probably declare it was inferior to his own choice, so Draco shouldn’t worry about it.  
  
 _One of the lessons you should have taken from your confrontation with Potter is that you can’t impress everyone with the Malfoy charm_.  
  
Yolanda leaned forwards across the table and lowered her voice. Draco had thought she might do that. His hands were conveniently beneath the level of the table, so he squeezed the small crystal in his pocket. Potter had given it to him and explained that it was a device the Aurors used to overhear private conversations, as long as it could be carried by or planted on one of the participants in the conversation. Squeezing it would allow their words to flow directly to a similar device in Potter’s ears.   
  
Potter had explained all that in fascinating detail, then forbidden Draco to ever explicitly mention the device in a novel. Not all Draco’s sulking had changed that.  
  
“You have to understand, Mr. Malfoy, that there is a reason to get out of the public eye with such talk as you gave me.”  
  
Draco nodded with a wide-eyed expression. “Of course. Because though you are the best audience for it, you are not the only audience if we speak in the middle of the street.”  
  
“Exactly.” Yolanda leaned back in her seat enough to look at him appraisingly. “But I have wards around this table that will prevent anyone from eavesdropping now. You may speak freely to me of what you have learned.”  
  
Draco dropped his eyelids coyly. “I don’t think I could…without some hope of material reward from it.”  
  
He felt more than he saw Yolanda’s shudder. Aberforth came back with his drink, and Draco used the excuse of looking up and nodding at him to glance around the room. Still he saw no one who looked like Potter, or indeed like anything but a hunched and shrouded shape. Some of them resembled furniture more than human beings.  
  
“I dislike all talk of material things,” Yolanda said softly. “We are both writers, Mr. Malfoy, which means that we deal with the spiritual matter of personalities, motivations, pasts, souls. I would rather pay you in coinage of the soul. Assuming, of course, that you know anything I would find valuable.”  
  
“I think I do.” Draco chose a shrewd expression this time, as if he were considering her words, while he sipped at his Firewhisky. “For example, I have a letter here. While it is a material thing and thus not to your taste intrinsically, I think the shape of the writing and the thickness of the paper and the color of the ink all together add up to a sufficiently metaphysical whole.” He dug out the letter he had had Justice intercept and handed it solemnly across the table.  
  
Yolanda took it and gazed at it. Draco watched her face, but she had absolutely perfect control of her muscles. He shook his head. He had thought it might be so. He had spent last night, after Potter left, rereading a few of her stories, and she described expressions too well not to know how betraying they could be. Sometimes the major revelations of her writing depended on the look on a character’s face.  
  
“Interesting,” said Yolanda, running one finger down the crease in the middle of the letter. “Cryptic. Almost prophetic. However, I fail to see how, from this letter, you have deduced that I could have any connection to it.”  
  
“The letter hints of madness, does it not?” Draco lowered his voice to the soft tone of hers, fully confident that Potter would be able to overhear them despite everything. “Almost savors of it. And I know that you write about madness.”  
  
Yolanda touched the edge of the paper, seeming to admire the shape of the letters, and then smiled at Draco. “And you have brought this to me to serve as a source of inspiration for my stories? It is very kind of you, but ideas concerned with madness and the other vices of our society which require satirizing drop freely from the air. I need not pay you for this.” She pushed the letter back to him.  
  
Draco put a hand on the edge of the table and prevented the parchment from falling off it. “Look again,” he urged gently. “Does any of this seem familiar?”  
  
“No.” Yolanda shook her head, and she could do innocence very well, couldn’t she? Her eyes were not ridiculously knowing, and she let her shoulders rise in a helpless shrug when Draco looked at her. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. I would tell you if I had seen it before, but I am afraid that any hunt you mount in this direction is futile.”  
  
Draco would have exploded in frustration if he hadn’t expected this. Yolanda must know the consequences that could fall upon her head if she was suspected of tormenting Potter, or even driving him to madness or suicide. So he simply nodded and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.  
  
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he mused. “That both you and I make our living writing about prominent members of our society, and yet it shouldn’t have occurred to us before now?”  
  
Yolanda said, “I beg your pardon?”  
  
“I can’t believe that I never thought of Potter before.” Draco brought his gaze down and smiled at her, keeping his face gentle. “It seems like he would be the natural start to any series called  _Heroic Lives_ , and yet, here I am, finding him almost at the end. And you probably would have targeted him much earlier, except that he moved in a sphere that you considered beyond your reach.”  
  
“Do you still persist in your delusion that I had anything to do with this?” Yolanda nodded to the letter. “Though I must thank you for giving me a name.”  
  
Draco suffered a brief moment of panic. What if he had judged wrongly and given up Potter’s secrets for nothing? Yolanda’s regret and incomprehension was so perfect that it seemed hard to believe it was a mask.  
  
But he did not distrust his own artistic judgment that much. This had become an argument about art, now, or at least he was trying to turn it into one. He linked his fingers together and gave her a wise, scolding look.   
  
“I know that you’re hunting him,” he said. It was a more open statement than he had planned to make, but Yolanda made a careless motion with her left hand, and that at least showed he had caught her attention. “I don’t blame you. Such tempting prey.” He hoped fervently that Potter wouldn’t take the wrong impression from this, but then, he had probably heard his partner or his confederates sound as if they were betraying him before during his Auror work. Draco could not believe that no one who tried to kill Aurors had ever targeted Potter. “And if you discovered that he had a secret that brought him close to the edge of madness, how could you resist?”  
  
Yolanda gave him a fleeting smile. “You have a grave misunderstanding of my character, if you believe that I would target the hero who saved us all.”  
  
“I have a better understanding of your art,” Draco said. “You have to destroy everything that is pure and uncomplicated. Potter is not an uncomplicated force for good in our world, but many people see him that way. You would need to bring out his flaws into a sharper light and cast him down, so that other people would see the folly of their own aspirations in trying to rise out of the muck of the world. And madness is quite a flaw.”  
  
He leaned nearer, and Yolanda did the same thing with what looked like a struggle against herself. Draco could have laughed triumphantly. He had her. Yolanda, like all writers Draco was familiar with, wanted to be praised, but she also wanted to be understood. And if Draco had seen what she was trying to do, even if he didn’t approve of it, she had to follow the irresistible call of his charmer’s pipe.  
  
“That was it, wasn’t it?” Draco whispered. “That was the reason you never thought of him. Maybe he wasn’t pure and uncomplicated—you knew that in your bones, you could taste that simply by running your tongue along your lips—but you hadn’t discovered any evidence of a flaw in him that others hadn’t used to try and bring him down, and failed with. You knew that most of your audience wouldn’t listen, now, to the same old lies filled with the dirt of prejudice. You ignored him because he wasn’t a victim.  
  
“Then you looked into his eyes, and it seems that you saw the taint of incipient madness there. I commend you for spotting it. Someone who wasn’t looking, who wasn’t enthralled with his seeming divinity, wouldn’t have seen it. But you did.  
  
“You saw through the veils of illusion and into the heart of things. You always do. That’s why your enemies hate and fear you. You aren’t a satirist so much as a prophet, predicting the fall of their idols. And if you try to hurry along the fall of one, what does that matter?” Draco shrugged a bit, watching the fascinated way her eyes widened. “He would fall in any case. Perhaps you can ensure that he doesn’t take down the delicate fabric of so many hopes and dreams when he perishes.”  
  
He paused, then added gently, “Wasn’t that the way it was?”  
  
Yolanda shivered all over. Then she took a deep breath and said, “You seem to know much about me.”  
  
“I have read you, and I have thought as long on your stories as my brain would permit,” Draco said simply. “That is why I dare to claim knowledge of you, no matter how much my knowledge of your character may be lacking.”  
  
Yolanda shivered again, and said, “Yes. I understand now. You are more of an artist than I thought you were when you began to talk of vulgar payment. You are a seer of souls, someone who can spin cobwebs and make them as strong as steel.”  
  
Draco preened under her praise, because she would expect it of him and because it was true, and then said, “I spoke of payment only because I had my doubts, at first, that you had sought Potter out as true grist for the mill of your stories and not for some other, more unforgivable reason. Now that I know the truth, I see no reason for you to deny it to me. You wrote those letters, didn’t you?” He leaned forwards and gazed at her with his heart in his eyes.  
  
“Yes.” No hesitation in Yolanda’s voice, no wavering.  
  
Draco could almost hear Potter’s silent gasp from somewhere in the room. He wanted to laugh triumphantly, but he controlled himself and gave her a steady look. “And was it the way I have said? I want to be corrected if there is any wrongness in my tale.”  
  
“It was,” Yolanda said. “I saw him, and I read the truth of the madness in his eyes. It was all as you have said.” She sat back and sipped at her foul-smelling drink, smiling at Draco.  
  
“You must be a mighty reader of souls, to see it in his eyes,” Draco said.  
  
“Of souls.” Yolanda’s smile grew deeper. “Or of minds.”  
  
She’s a Legilimens. Of course. Draco felt incredibly stupid.  
  
“You have done a remarkable job of figuring it out,” Yolanda said. “I am glad, given that you also show an understanding of my art that no one has demonstrated in years.” She sighed. “It is a lonely journey, to go through one’s life and not be understood.”  
  
“I can bear that,” Draco said. He was giving little attention to the conversation now, instead trying to turn his head so that he could seek out Potter in his disguise. He would lose the bet if he tried to figure it out later. “But I can’t bear to see people disregard and misunderstand my books. I am lucky enough to have achieved considerable popular success, however.”  
  
“I have envied you that at times,” Yolanda said, with a heaviness of tone that turned Draco’s eyes back to her. “I have thought that you were working with inferior material, however much you sculpted it into pleasing shapes, and that I deserved the attention lavished on you better than you did.”  
  
Draco lifted his chin and shrugged slightly, not sure that he dared take his eyes from her now. There was a strange sharpness to her face that concerned him. “Alas, there is no accounting for the tastes of critics.”  
  
“No, indeed.” Yolanda slid her hand carelessly along the table. “Luckily, most other matters are more easily explained.”  
  
The world abruptly began to spin before Draco’s eyes. He coughed, feeling as if the foul smell of Yolanda’s drink had got into his throat and begun to choke him. He sagged forwards, and felt Yolanda form a pillow of her hands to catch him.  
  
“Always sad when someone becomes drunk on success,” Yolanda said with a sigh, and then she shouted for Aberforth.  
  
The barman grumbled when he learned that he was doomed to receive Galleons for Draco’s drink from someone other than Draco, but Yolanda spoke soothingly, pleasantly, and he departed a little less ruffled. Draco heard their voices as from a distance. He couldn’t raise his head. He couldn’t move his limbs. His eyes were flickering helplessly open and shut, and even when he  _could_  see, he was staring at a formless sea of shifting colors.  
  
 _What the fuck did she do to me?_  
  
He told himself he should have anticipated this; after all, Yolanda had used the Hideous Hopfrog venom, and if she was a Legilimens, then she had probably read his intentions out of his mind in the moment after he sat down.  
  
 _And I just had to sit there, looking her in the eye, in those first seconds, to prove that I wasn’t afraid._    
  
“No, I can help him home,” Yolanda was telling someone else, her voice gentle and amused. “I’m afraid that we met here to celebrate the publication of his new book, and he had a few too many. He doesn’t live far from me.”  
  
The inquisitive person turned away, and Draco engaged in a mad struggle to put his head up and yell for help. But his body continued to dangle limply, and Yolanda sighed as if she were exasperated and cast a Lightening Charm.  
  
“You’ve gained some bulk over the last year, Draco,” she murmured to him.  
  
Draco was torn between outrage that she would dare to say such a thing and admiration of her acting skills. No one was going to come for him as long as they thought she was just helping a friend home.  
  
Then he remembered that Potter had been in the Hog’s Head, and his hopes rose.  
  
Then he remembered that Yolanda had had the chance to read  _that_  part of his plan out of his head, too, and his hopes crashed again.  
  
“Ah, this way.” Yolanda turned a corner. Draco tried to force his eyes to focus and figure out which one it was, but the houses were only smears that were losing definition even as he tried to watch them. “I thought so,” said Yolanda in a pleased voice, and then she wrapped one arm around him and Apparated.  
  
Draco thought he must have fallen unconscious for a moment, because he seemed to go straight from darkness and silence into firelight and harp music. Yolanda said something sharp that was probably meant to dismiss the house-elf, and deposited him on a couch. Draco tried to breathe deeply, as if he were asleep, and wondered if that would be enough to fool her, and if Potter would be able to track them through her Apparition.  
  
Yolanda reached down and plucked something from his hip, and suddenly Draco was seeing normally again, though he still couldn’t move. He gave her a haughty glare, and restrained the first clichéd words that sprang to his lips. He wasn’t a character in a story, and neither was she. Forgetting that had been part of the problem earlier.  
  
“Another little invention of mine,” Yolanda explained. Draco had a distracted thought that that was kind of her, to take the time to soothe his curiosity. They had some things in common, after all. Yolanda sat down on a couch next to him and shook her head. “What do I do now? That is the question. I don’t fancy being charged with murder, and I don’t trust Memory Charms to hold. The stories where the villain releases the hero with amnesia and thinks that he’ll not remember a thing  _never_  work out well.” She paused a moment, as if considering her statement as one about art, and added, “For the villain, at least, which I grant you is rarely their import.”  
  
“Simply because I discovered it doesn’t mean that I would have done anything about it,” Draco said. He tried to sound calm and bored. Maybe that would convince Yolanda that he had done this only as a game, if she hadn’t read all his thoughts. “A confession like the one you made today, without Veritaserum and just to me in a pub, isn’t of any use in identifying you if you won’t repeat it. I wanted the satisfaction of running Potter’s tormentor to earth. Now that I’ve done it, I don’t have to—”  
  
“I don’t believe you,” Yolanda said in a gentle voice, shaking her head slowly back and forth. “Did you know that you have very expressive eyes, Draco? Not like Potter’s. He has no shields, but he looks at the world with a guarded gaze. No reason why he should not, after it has hurt him so many times. But you look with a confident, steady gaze, because not enough has thwarted you.” She stepped forwards and reached into his pocket. Draco’s heart grew heavier as she fetched out the listening crystal that Potter had given him and crushed it with an easy pressure of her fingers.  
  
Draco closed his eyes. At the moment, it didn’t seem that he could do anything else.  
  
Yolanda bent down towards him, and he felt her breath on the edge of his ear. “I need inspiration from reality, as you do,” she whispered. “I had hoped that the tale of Potter’s decline would serve me for a book-length work, and I hoped to give it a final artistic polish—as Potter himself is so completely lacking in artistry—by precipitating that decline. But it looks as though he is warned. Some months of wasted effort.  
  
“But a night may make up for it. And there are many ways in which someone could serve as inspiration, especially for someone who knows madness and death as intimately as I do.” Yolanda tweaked his ear, and he couldn’t even react to that. “I will give you an honorable role in the final story you will ever tell, Draco. I promise you that.” 


	10. Inspiration

_Potter, where are you_? Draco thought, as Yolanda secured the chains around him and then stepped back to admire her work.  
  
Sarcastically, he answered himself.  _Somewhere far away, acting like a good little Auror and probably trying to get help to rescue me instead of going after someone on his own. Potter’s become a bit too rule-bound for his own good._    
  
“There,” Yolanda breathed. “I think that will do.”  
  
Draco glanced up and down. The chains bound him to a metal frame, which he thought was shaped like an X but wasn’t sure of; he hadn’t had a chance to get a good look at it before Yolanda had turned him so that he was facing away from it, out into the room. All he knew for certain was that it was hard and knobby and his arms were already complaining. “I think you could stand to loosen the chains a bit,” he said.  
  
Yolanda shook her head, smiling. “You keep your sense of humor even under intense pressure, Draco. I do admire that. The character I plan to base on you will do the same thing.” She turned to reach behind her and drew out a large basin that looked like a Pensieve. Draco blinked and took a moment to study the differences—it was white, not silver, and had figures carved along the rim that looked like tortured dancers—before he decided it was his duty as a fellow artist to let her know something.  
  
“You can’t effectively torture me with a Pensieve,” he said. “It has a distinct lack of spikes.”  
  
Yolanda’s smile only widened as she tapped her wand on the rim of the basin and spoke an incantation. A silver whirlwind rose from the basin and floated ominously towards Draco. Draco darted his head forwards and snapped at it, trying to make it keep its distance, but it paid no attention. It settled on top of his skull instead, and Draco hissed as a squeezing sensation flooded his head.   
  
He had never so much cursed his writer’s vivid imagination before as when he was able to see, all too well, his brains leaping out of his ears and falling all over the floor.   
  
The silver mist drifted away from him after only a moment, and returned to the basin. Yolanda spoke two incantations, and it dissolved into separate spiral clouds, which slid down into the basin and filled it with shining silvery water that looked like liquid memories after all. Yolanda leaned over and plunged her head into them.  
  
Draco watched her in confused silence. Was she trying to learn enough about him so that she could torture him effectively?   
  
 _And a more pressing and better question: Where is Potter, and who gave him permission to dally like this?_    
  
“Ah!” Yolanda pulled her head free and shook it so that flying drops of sliver liquid landed in the corners of the room. Draco just managed to bite his lip on a protest. Those were  _his_  memories she was scattering like common rubbish. He kept silent mostly because he suspected she wouldn’t care. Yolanda turned towards him and nodded.   
  
“This is an invention of my own,” she said. “It doesn’t work exactly like an ordinary Pensieve, the way that you may have noticed from its color and the effort required to fill it. It contains many of your worst memories.”  
  
Draco sniffed. “So what? I’ve faced those memories down before, and managed to go on and live my life.”  
  
“But have you faced them all at once?” Yolanda cocked her head. “Have you faced them in their rawness,  _exactly_  as they happened, and dropping onto your mind like a weight of boulders?” She moved towards him at a swinging pace that inevitably reminded Draco of a stalking wildcat. “Individually, no, I doubt that these memories are much trouble to you. But all together, they have the power to crack your mind open and send you falling through the cracks into the depths. I’ll keep sending them through your head, like endless nightmares, until they do.”  
  
Draco had to respect the idea behind the plan. He wanted to say that it wouldn’t work, but he couldn’t make that statement for certain. He shook his head. “And you’re doing this because it will give you something new to write about?”  
  
“Yes, that.” Yolanda stepped towards him and examined him in the leisurely fashion Draco himself used when he was thinking up a new character based on someone who already existed, as though she wanted to get the proportions of the limbs and the angles of the head exactly right. “And because you stole the person I  _was_  going to write about. I think Potter will ignore my letters now, and they cannot torment him into madness. It is only fair that you replace my victim.”  
  
“You were wrong about the similarities between us,” Draco said. “I don’t think of my characters as victims. I think of them as people I’m going to transfigure, purge the raw material out of, and turn into heroes.”  
  
“You are right,” Yolanda said. “We are very different. I might have been able to write about Potter. You, he never would have let near him.” She waved her wand, and the frame Draco was bound to Levitated into the air and flew over to the white basin.  
  
Draco concentrated, counted to three under his breath, and lashed out with all his limbs at once, hoping that would get up enough strength to break the metal frame. The frame, however, continued serenely flying with him, and finally came to a stop less than a foot above his memories. Yolanda spent a few moments guiding it into the right place, then whispered an incantation Draco couldn’t make out.  
  
An invisible force gripped his neck and plunged his face beneath the surface of the memories.  
  
*  
  
What could have been hours or seconds later, Draco fought his way slowly back to a consciousness of himself. He hung still, blinking his eyes and staring straight ahead, telling himself that he was here in this body, present, right now, watching stone walls—Yolanda appeared to believe that a room where she was going to torture someone should look like a proper dungeon—and feeling bits of memory drip off his eyelashes. His body was sore with flinching and the bonds. His head—  
  
His head felt empty and too full, at once. The horror and sorrow of seeing the boy he had been, trapped in hopeless situations while Voldemort made him torture people, flowed through it in a sluggish wave, giving him a heavy feeling. But at the same time, he couldn’t get a good hold on any one individual memory. They whirled and drifted and twisted together, like the spiral clouds they had formed going into the basin.  
  
He had wept. He knew that. But he also felt numb, as though being subjected to so much suffering at once had left him unable to react.  
  
A hand gripped his hair and pulled his face up so that he was looking into Yolanda’s eyes. Draco felt her Legilimency probing and poking at his mind this time, sliding among his thoughts and rummaging through them. Draco shuddered and tried to shut his eyes, only to find that he didn’t have control of them anymore.  
  
“Ah,” Yolanda said, with a disappointed tone this time. “It appears that your mind is more resilient than I thought it was. A pity, when the hue and cry about your being missing will go up tomorrow. Perhaps I simply need to increase the amount of memories?” She paused, as if taking counsel with someone invisible, and then shook her head. “No, I think I’ll need to increase the pain of them as well.” The silver cloud rose from the basin at her command and encircled Draco’s head and neck again.  
  
“No,” Draco whispered. “Please.” He felt so strange that the witty words he wanted to speak scattered when he reached after them.  
  
“Pleading does not truly affect me,” Yolanda said. “One of my victims found out what my story was about on the verge of publication and came to ask me, to beg me, not to publish it.” She shook her head in what looked like wonder. “How was I to respond to that? What I do is what I do. It is art. Art cannot be changed or criticized before it is even born, or it will die stillborn. Art cannot be made responsible to the world. If someone reads one of my stories and then goes out and commits a murder, have I caused it? If someone changes their life because of my stories and becomes a bit more bitter and cynical, have I caused it? I am an artist, and I create free of all restrictions and all restraint. It must be that, or my art would be less than pure. And I cannot have that.”  
  
Draco had tried to use the moments when she was speaking to breathe quickly but calmly and settle his mind for another bout with the memories. But the heavy, empty, numb feeling was still with him, and he realized that he would need days or months before he was ready to face something like that again. And he did not have days or months.  
  
He barely thought about what he was going to do before he did it. If he had, Yolanda would only have read it out of his thoughts anyway. He lunged forwards and closed his teeth hard on her nose.  
  
Yolanda yelped and danced backwards, or tried. Draco clenched his teeth down hard, harder than he’d ever bitten into anything, and then began swaying in the frame that held him. He heard skin and flesh tear, and had a private moment of exultation before something—Yolanda’s wand or fist—struck him in the temple hard enough to daze him and make his teeth release.  
  
He hung there, panting, licking at the blood and bits of skin on his lips, and listened to Yolanda steadily swear. It bought him a few more moments. Draco tried his best to think of his novels, where the best part of him lived, and his parents, and Potter, and anything else that was not the memories that rolled through his head and were trying to force him to dwell on them.  
  
“This time,” Yolanda said at last, thrusting her face into his and showing him that her nose was a bloody ruin, “I will leave you down until your mind  _breaks_.” She spat out some of the blood that had fallen into her mouth and then waved her wand so that the frame jerked Draco lower all at once.  
  
His face hadn’t quite touched the memories when he heard a sound like crumbling stone, and Yolanda cried out. Whether the sound was one of pain or fear or surprise, Draco didn’t know. What he mostly cared about was that the frame stopped with his face still far enough above the memories that he could turn his head and look towards the intruder. His curiosity would probably kill him, he had to acknowledge.  
  
Potter was standing in the middle of a hole in the air, which behind him was grey and black and  _other_. Draco found himself jerking his eyes away as soon as he looked, feeling fainter and sicker than when he had first come up from the memories. He had no doubt that he’d just had a glimpse into the world of the dead.  
  
The important thing was the Potter had come through it, and now he was here, and now that he was here, he was going to save Draco. Draco barely minded being cast into the role of victim instead of author, which showed how horrible Yolanda was.   
  
 _You tried to change my place in the story,_  he thought at her, with more indignation than he had felt when he thought she was going to kill him.  _Bitch._  
  
“Potter,” Yolanda said. Her voice was shaking, though she maintained the pleasant tone that Draco had heard her use in the Hog’s Head when she confessed to sending the letters to Potter. “How strange of you to intrude on me like this. I don’t see why you need to concern yourself with what two consenting adults get up to at night.”  
  
Potter didn’t bother answering her, which Draco thought was a sign of how intelligent he could be—sometimes. He stepped out of the hole, which made it possible for Draco to look at him from a corner of his eye, and said quietly, “Are you all right?”  
  
“My mind will recover,” Draco said. “Though not if she forces me to take more baths in my memories and pummels my thoughts with them all at once.”  
  
He wasn’t sure how clear that was as a description of what had happened to him, but it seemed to be enough for Potter, who compressed his lips and turned to confront Yolanda. Yolanda lifted her head and looked almost bored, toying with a locket that hung around her neck on a silver chain. Draco tensed. “That’s probably a weapon,” he told Potter. “She tends to be good at having unusual ones. I wouldn’t let her touch it for much longer.”  
  
Potter aimed his wand at Yolanda in response. “I heard everything through the crystal,” he said. “I would have arrived to stop you from taking him if I hadn’t seen a murder that needed preventing before the conversation ever began.”  
  
“Ha!” Draco exclaimed, happy despite himself. “Then you weren’t in the Hog’s Head at all, under a disguise or any other way! That means that I win the bet, because I wouldn’t have had a chance of seeing you.”  
  
Potter’s mouth twitched, though he never looked away from Yolanda. Draco was glad to see some sign of human emotion in him, stern as he was at the moment. “I think it means the bet is canceled. But we shall have to see what the spell thinks.”  
  
“There are many things that could explain this,” Yolanda said, in a low, curiously happy voice. “That Draco and I were acting parts, for example. You must have heard the part of the conversation where Draco speaks about turning you into a character in his stories. Why punish me, since I have found a substitute, and not him, for having the gall to speak of doing that?”  
  
Draco held his breath. It was possible that Potter might believe her, or at least believe that Draco had turned traitor to his promise not to write books about Potter, especially since Potter didn’t have all that much reason to trust him yet.  
  
But, maybe because he was used to dealing with criminals who would tell desperate lies to save themselves, Potter didn’t react to what she said except to take a few steps forwards and say, “I know what I heard. I know that you’ve been tormenting me long before the idea occurred to Malfoy to write about me.” He paused and stared hard at Yolanda. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, as though he thought that gentleness could persuade her not to act like a fool. “It’s not too late. Surrender now, and I can arrest you and take you to the Ministry for them to deal with.”  
  
Yolanda smiled and didn’t stop toying with the ornament about her neck. “How does it feel, to know that you can see the world of the dead and it is no illusion? Perhaps you are not mad, but you are different from the rest of the wizarding world and always will be. I can hardly think they would forgive it, did they know.”  
  
“It’s over,” Potter said. “You can’t alter me from my course, and I won’t let you hurt Draco any longer.” Draco would have danced in place on hearing his first name from Potter’s lips if not for the bonds. “Surrender, and let it be the end for you, as well. Don’t court your fate.”  
  
Yolanda stepped closer to him, eyes bright. By now, silver lights were coruscating around her fingers, and her hand moved faster and faster across the surface of the ornament. “I am an artist, Potter,” she said. “You should have heard and understood that if you understood any of our conversation at all. You cannot cause me to fear you in the same way that you cause criminals to fear you, because I am not consumed by guilt.”  
  
Potter watched her with a cool, remote gaze for a minute, then lowered his head. Draco could see that his coolness was gone, replaced by a terrible sadness.   
  
 _Do something_! Draco wanted to scream at him.  _Do you want Yolanda blinding us or making us forget what’s happened or doing something else equally heinous because you couldn’t be bothered to fight her?_    
  
But another realization made him bite his lip and keep silent. Even though he couldn’t have a clue what Yolanda’s weapon did, Potter wasn’t afraid. That must mean he had another plan in waiting. Draco knew that Potter was often reckless, but he wasn’t reckless with the lives of others. While Draco was in the room, he wouldn’t give Yolanda more chances than she deserved.  
  
As Yolanda started spouting off some other nonsense about art that Draco didn’t bother to listen to, he saw that Potter’s eyes were fastened on her hands. Draco approved. He should be looking at the part of her that was closest to the dangerous weapon.  
  
But then Potter looked at the floor, and he winced and shut his eyes. Incredulous that he would give Yolanda an opening like that, Draco looked at the floor, too, but saw nothing there save Yolanda’s shadow.  
  
Potter’s words when they had sat in his tower and Potter confessed the secret behind the letters rushed back to him.  
  
 _I see grey outlines flickering around people’s hands when they’ve committed a murder. I see a grey aura replace their shadows when they’re on the verge of death themselves.  
  
No wonder he isn’t frightened_, Draco thought, dazed, and then Yolanda’s voice rose in a shout and a great curling blue-white storm of magic rushed out of her ornament.  
  
At the same time, Potter lifted his head and spread his hands and said, in a flat, uninflected voice, “Do what you must.”  
  
Grey shapes began to step out of the hole in the air that Potter had traveled through. At least, Draco assumed they were grey; after one attempt to look at them, his eyes rebelled as they had when Yolanda hit him with her weapon in the Hog’s Head, and he had to look away with his stomach swimming. But they were vaguely human-shaped, and they walked past Potter, who stood there with his hands still extended and an absolutely miserable expression on his face, and towards Yolanda.  
  
The blue-white magic hit them and simply vanished. Draco shivered.  _That was probably magic meant to hurt the living._  
  
Yolanda backed away from the dead, her arms lifted as if she could hold them back that way. Another weapon went up, creating a flickering golden circle around her left hand. Draco had to fight and blink hard as it blinded him; when he could see again, a smoking ring had dropped from Yolanda’s finger to lie useless on the floor, and the dead were still advancing on her.  
  
They trapped her against the far wall and surrounded her.   
  
Draco couldn’t see exactly what happened next. The dead were too hard to look at, and Yolanda seemed to be changing in color to match them, gold and blue running out of her eyes and clothes like a sloppy dye job. But she did make a deep sucking noise, once, as if she were struggling to breathe comfortably in cold air.  
  
Potter bowed his head further, and then dropped his hands. “You can go,” he said. “Take her home.”  
  
The dead turned and flowed back around him to the hole in the air. Draco didn’t try to watch them go. He kept his eyes on Potter instead, who looked nearly as grey as they did, and exhausted, and sorrowful.  
  
And with his eyes full of something that was probably self-loathing.  
  
Potter brought his hands together, staring intently at the hole. It closed, and Potter sagged as though someone had cut off his access to a crutch that had been holding him up. Then he turned, his head drooping slightly, and staggered over to Draco. By the time he reached the white basin, he was walking more or less normally again, but he didn’t look Draco in the face as he destroyed the frame and set him down.  
  
Draco groaned in relief as the bonds fell away from his limbs, and then nearly fell. He’d been bound in an awkward position so long he didn’t think it was surprising that he couldn’t stand on his own right away. Potter caught him and murmured soothing sounds into his ear while he tapped his wand here and there on Draco’s arms and legs, easing the blood flow and healing some of the pain that had crept into them.  
  
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be here earlier,” he whispered. “I saw a man with grey on his hands on the way to the Hog’s Head, and I had to follow him and stop the second murder that he was about to commit. I  _did_  hear the conversation, and then the only way I could get past Timpany’s wards was to travel through the world of the dead.” He stopped for a moment, as if hearing the words spoken aloud made him hate himself more than ever. Then he swallowed and continued. “I’m sorry you had to endure what you did.”  
  
“I’ll accept that apology, since it’s more than I’ll ever get from her.” Draco kept one elbow on Potter’s shoulder as he hopped gingerly in a circle and turned around to face Potter again. Potter tried to look away; Draco jabbed at his neck so that those green eyes, startled and indignant, would look at him again. “You can do more than just seeing the world of the dead, can’t you?” Draco asked softly.  
  
Potter winced. “Yes,” he said in a muffled voice. “That’s the part I try not to think about, so I have no idea if Timpany ever discovered it. I can travel through their world if I need to and—and ask them to claim someone who’s about to die.” He shook his head. “Of course, I have to wonder whether what caused those people to die was the  _fact_  that I sent the dead to claim them.”  
  
“I don’t see why you  _have_  to wonder about that,” Draco said firmly. “It sounds like the kind of philosophical conundrum that would drive you mad more efficiently than Yolanda’s letters would. She also could have died because of her own magic, and she would certainly have killed us. We have no idea what that weapon of hers was meant to do. Now, I think the spell considers the bet forfeited by both parties, or one of us would have started itching by now. But I’m the one who actually showed up to the Hog’s Head. So I claim your indulgence for an evening of conversation, which ought to include those things you’ve been keeping from me.”  
  
Potter raised a hand and trailed his fingers gently around the outline of Draco’s eye. “Yes,” he whispered. “All right.”  
  
Draco turned his head and let himself kiss delicately at Potter’s fingers. “Can you undo the wards from inside the house so that we can Apparate out? I don’t fancy walking through the world of the dead to leave.”  
  
Potter’s arm tightened around his waist. “Yes,” he said again. He began to sketch his wand through the motions of the spells that would remove the wards.  
  
Maybe he should have kept silent, but Draco’s curiosity still pushed him. “What are you going to tell the Aurors about Timpany?”  
  
Potter paused to say in a low voice, “I don’t know,” before he returned to his work.  
  
After that, Draco was quite content to lean on him and be Apparated out. He was the author, after all, not the hero. 


	11. Illumination

“Now. I think you can talk to me now.”  
  
The evening had been filled with a great deal of unnecessary nonsense, from Draco’s point of view. Potter had gone to the Ministry, dragging Draco along behind him, and explained in terribly earnest terms about how Yolanda Timpany had abused him, and abused Draco, and got killed when one of her own weapons destroyed her. Draco thought that he didn’t need to feel bad about it, as it wasn’t even a lie; obviously the weapon had failed to protect her from the dead. Potter didn’t  _need_  to tell the entire story with his eyes on the floor in a way that made the Head Auror looked at him with steadily increasing concern.  
  
Nevertheless, they accepted his story, and then Potter took him to St. Mungo’s and tried to leave him with Mind-Healers. Draco had clamped his hand down on Potter’s shoulder, told him that if his mental injuries could wait until after Potter explained his “crime” that surely meant he was well enough to bear company, and then turned around and met the Mind-Healers with his best pathetic expression.  
  
He never removed his hand.  
  
So Potter stayed, and when Draco described what had happened in detail, Potter reached out and put a hand on his arm in return. That hand pressed down uncomfortably, fingers making dents in his skin, the longer the story went on.  
  
Draco didn’t mind. He had made up his mind about certain things, things for which the press of those fingers was rather a promising sign than otherwise.  
  
The Mind-Healers spent a few minutes tapping Draco’s skull with crystal wands and then staring at them. Draco stared at them, too, to show willing, but ended up looking away in boredom because he couldn’t see the subtle sparkling colors that apparently filled them and told the Healers what was wrong with his brain.  
  
He preferred to spend the time looking at Potter, examining the shadows in the green eyes that came to him and then retired guiltily again, and watching how his grip, though it grew a little looser so as not to hurt Draco, never released.  
  
Draco had an excellent idea of what he wanted, now, and a way to incorporate his earlier physical attraction to Potter, the sense of fascination he’d had with him from the moment of his dinner with Potter in the Fire-Room, his gratitude at being rescued, and his continuing curiosity. If Potter refused to go along with it, then Draco would accept that.  
  
 _But I can be very persuasive, and I have learned that Potter is not immune to the Malfoy charm_ , he thought, and beamed to himself.  
  
The smile caused Potter to turn his head and stare at him. Draco stared back, and a small, reluctant smile worked its way over Potter’s lips at last. He dropped his head until his nose rested in Draco’s hair and sighed.  
  
 _Another good sign_ , Draco thought, reaching up to caress the back of Potter’s neck and ignoring the scandalized stare of a pair of Healers. They obviously hadn’t read Approaches to the Mark, his novel about Seamus Finnigan, or they would have known that this was far from the most daring thing Draco had done. The experimental narration in that book still scared Draco when he thought back on it.  
  
Finally, the Healers told Draco that his mind had been hurt, but would heal without “blue scars” (whatever that meant. Draco ordinarily would have asked, but he usually had room for only one obsession at a time, and his mind was full of Potter right now). They gave him a few lists of words to memorize that apparently would help shuffle his memories back into order. Draco nodded to them graciously as he walked out of hospital. He thought that was more than they deserved for keeping him away from his conversation with Potter.  
  
Potter shifted uneasily as they stood on the street in front of St. Mungo’s. “Um,” he said. “I reckon that I should let you go home now, and—”  
  
“But what if something happens to me on the way there?” Draco turned his eyes towards Potter and fluttered his lashes. “What if Timpany had an associate, and he comes after me to avenge her death?”  
  
Potter frowned at him. “How likely do you think that is to happen?”  
  
Draco sighed and stepped towards him, fastening his hand on the back of Potter’s neck again. “I’m trying to create a mood here, Potter,” he explained patiently. “I do it well in print, and I’m practicing my skills with words in the open air. The least you could do would be not to _shatter_  it. Particularly when it gives you a chance to relax from being Sterner Wizard the Son of Stern.”  
  
A quiver ran through Potter’s muscles, and he slowly brought his arms up and folded them around Draco’s shoulders. “It would be easier to adopt the mood,” he muttered, “if I knew when you would wake up and back away from me in horror.”  
  
Draco gripped one of his eyelids and flipped it up and down. “Awake,” he said. “Eager to adopt the mood. Why would I back away from you in horror?” He made sure to keep his voice soothing as he slid his hands down from Potter’s neck to his shoulders. He could feel his angry, or fearful, tremors more easily that way. “So far as I can see, you’ve saved my life from a woman who would have murdered me. I can’t pretend that I was eager to find out what her weapon did, either. You gave me much, and robbed me of nothing, not even inspiration for a story.”  
  
Potter glanced around the streets. “Not here,” he said. “I’m not eager for more people to find out my secret.”  
  
Draco nodded. “Then come back to my tower.”  
  
Potter fixed him with an uncertain look. “Are you sure you’re not tired? You’ve had a lot of excitement, and—”  
  
“I’m neither a child nor one of the maidens in distress that I sometimes write about.” Draco made sure to fill his voice with steel. It seemed as though Potter needed some for the stiffening of his own spine. “I can listen to any horrible tale that you care to tell me, Potter.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
Potter’s voice and eyes had both grown heavy with shadow. He made a gesture in front of him as though Draco should Apparate to the tower on his own. Draco smiled, wiser than that, and kept a grasp on him, which made Potter peer at him as if he were trying to see the damage in his mind that the Healers had failed to spot.  
  
 _You’re not getting free that easily_ , Draco thought, and led the way.  
  
*  
  
Potter looked out of place in Draco’s tower the way he hadn’t looked during his first visit. He kept his head ducked as he toyed with the new package of proofs for  _Golden Stories_  on the table between Draco’s couch and chair. (Angela hadn’t agreed with most of Draco’s changes and demanded that he make them over again). Draco asked him if he wanted tea and received a mumble in return, which was enough of an answer for him to start brewing. He added several small packets of spices that would make the tea smell sweet without altering the taste to the water, and had the satisfaction of seeing Potter lift his head and smile a little.  
  
“So,” Draco said, when he handed over the cup and settled opposite Potter, his hands folded peacefully around his own cup. “I’ve let you sit here in silence and brood long enough to find the words. Tell me why you think I should be running the other way, gasping hard enough to tear my throat, looking back over my shoulder.”  
  
“Sometimes I think I should read more books, if it would teach me to have a vocabulary like yours,” Potter said softly, and sipped his tea. Almost at once, the quiver in his muscles vanished. Draco concealed his smile behind the lip of his cup. The spices didn’t alter the taste, but they  _might_  have other effects.  
  
“There are many advantages to reading books, and that’s only one of them.” Draco looked ostentatiously at his hands. “No itching yet. The spell thinks I won, or it’s dissipated because the bet couldn’t be kept in the first place, as I told you. Now.  _Talk_.”  
  
Potter nodded shallowly. Then he said, “Isn’t it obvious? I can walk through the world of the dead. I can command them, as long as I do it only in the presence of someone who’s probably going to die anyway. Bringing them into the daylight world is—impossible, and I wouldn’t want to do it. Too contradictory.” He shook himself like a cat submerged in ice water. “I can’t imagine why you would want to be around me.”  
  
Draco set his cup down on the table and leaned forwards. “Listen to me, Potter.”  
  
Potter looked up. There was carefully concealed fear and relief in his eyes at the same moment. Draco knew he was anticipating being rejected and, while he would resent it, it meant that he wouldn’t have to deal with Draco reacting in a different way from the one he’d always imagined.  
  
“Those talents of yours saved my life,” Draco said. “I don’t think Timpany a great loss. I don’t think you would ever misuse them, because you’re too ridiculously noble. I don’t blame you for lying to me about them before; you could hardly have known that I would accept the truth with this level of enthusiasm. So. Explain to me why I should run the other way, gasping hard enough to tear my throat—”  
  
“The metaphor loses force when you repeat it twice,” Potter snapped, and his hand clenched down hard on his teacup.  
  
Draco applauded. “Wonderful! We’ll make a literary critic of you yet, if not a writer.” He raised an eyebrow. “And that’s an end of the silly diversions, I hope. The truth, now.”  
  
Potter at least spared the teacup, pushing it away from him across the table with a force that sent tea slopping onto the wood. “Malfoy,” he said between clenched teeth, “I’m marked out as different. Always have been.” A savage jerk on his fringe moved it aside so that Draco could see the scar, which he raised an eyebrow at, unsure why it should move him in the way Potter apparently assumed it should. “It was one thing when I had a Dark Lord after me and the hope that someday I could kill him. If I could kill him, then one day it wouldn’t be dangerous to be my friend anymore. Things could  _change_. Dumbledore said once that I had a prophecy haunting me, and—and I did, but the prophecy only predicted things up to a certain point. After that, I could live my life free of the bloody thing.  
  
“But this isn’t ever going to go away. I tried to ignore it, and all that happens is that I keep seeing the shadows and the world of the dead, and sometimes I hear the voices of the dead calling to me. I’m haunted, trailed, hounded by death. I  _stink_  of it.” He leaped to his feet and paced once around the room, promptly banging his shins into the small tables that Draco had used to decorate the sections of floor he normally didn’t use. He swore and rubbed them, then turned his head over his shoulder to glare at Draco. “How can you want to be around someone who—who’ll look at your shadow someday and see death coming for you?”  
  
Draco rose to his feet and crossed the distance between them.  _Really_ , he thought, as he took Potter’s shoulders between his hands again and stared earnestly into his eyes,  _I ought to receive a special wage as the official Calmer-Down of Harry Potter_. Potter was already relaxing again, breathing more softly and in a sane manner, studying him with wary eyes.  
  
“First of all,” Draco said, “I’ve smelled you at close quarters several times now, and you smell fine to me.” He sniffed delicately. “Perhaps a different scent would be advisable to cover the smell of sweat, but I’ll concede that it does make you more  _manly_.”  
  
Potter stared at him, mouth and eyes both wide. A few times, a faint spluttering sound worked its way up his throat, as though he were trying to figure out a way to respond, but each time it died.  
  
“Second of all,” Draco said, “it doesn’t matter that you have some unusual talents. They don’t frighten me. I told you that I don’t think you’ll ever misuse them. Yes, of course they mark you out, but that makes you all the more fascinating to me. And the scar came first.” He reached up and traced a finger over it. Potter jolted as though Draco had cast a lightning bolt at him through his fingernail. Draco smiled up at him, wondering how many people had ever touched it. “If dating an unusual man bothered me, then I wouldn’t have chosen you at all, since I knew about that before I knew about your remarkable death-defying powers.”  
  
“You make horrible puns—” Potter said, and then stopped and continued in a flatter voice, “Dating.”  
  
“Yes.” Draco closed his hand still on Potter’s shoulder down as an undeniable pressure and traced the line of the scar in reverse this time. “I wondered why I was feeling attracted to you before, almost mesmerized. Now I know. I’d like to date you. I’d like to know you better, and not because I want you to be a character in my novels. I want—I want you in—in many senses.” His words faltered because Potter had continued to stare at him with an incredulous expression, and Draco had to wonder, for the first time, if the Malfoy charm was not going to be enough for this. “Your gifts are another facet of you that I want to learn to understand, not some horrible deformity that’s going to hold me away from you or keep us from having sex.” He thought back on Potter’s earlier words, and added, “Don’t tell me that you weren’t meditating a longer association between us. You said that you feared looking at me someday and seeing that I was going to die. What does that imply, but that you would stay around me for a long time?”  
  
Potter closed his eyes. His voice was a whisper. “It’s been fourteen years since I started hoping that someone would be able to stay with me despite this. I can’t lie about it, and yet I  _know_  that it would drive everyone away with its strangeness in the end. Don’t make me hope, Draco. It’s cruel.”  
  
“I can be cruel if that’s warranted.” Draco pressed his lips to Potter’s collarbone and slowly trailed them sideways, interrupting his own words by necessity. He thought it worth the sacrifice when Potter gave a muffled shiver and a quiet moan. “Really,” Draco added when he lifted his head, “I should be the one who’s worried here. You’re possessed of all sorts of beauties that you could use to attract any partner you desired—if you didn’t undervalue them enough to scare all your courtiers away.  _I_  should be the one fearing that you would only want to stay with me because I like you.”  
  
In a moment, Potter’s hands shot out and cradled Draco’s face. Draco blinked. He had hoped something like that would happen, but Potter had moved with bewildering Auror swiftness, so he had hardly seen the touch coming.  
  
“How could you even  _think_  that?” Potter whispered, leaning in near enough that Draco felt his eyes water trying to keep his gaze steady. “Of course I want to be with you for other reasons. The way you faced Timpany was one of the bravest things I’ve seen in my life. Your conversation through the crystal was—dazzling, if hard to follow. You have an irreverence that I can’t help but admire. I’ve got accustomed to thinking of myself as someone anyone will bow to and strive to please. When you obviously didn’t care a thing about that and kept pursuing me to get the story out of me anyway, part of me was charmed. Though other parts of me hated it, of course.” He gave Draco a reluctant smile and reached up to stroke his hair. “And I’ve never thought you were ugly. At least, not since I saw a publicity photo when your first novel came out and realized that you’d lost most of the pointiness you had in school.”  
  
Draco recovered his breath in a blast of indignation to say, “I was never  _pointy_.”  
  
Potter gave him a gentler smile than before. “Whatever you say, Draco.”  
  
“Although I will accept the encomiums of brave and clever, and even irreverent if I must,” Draco added, brushing briefly at his face to remove any flakes of skin that Harry might have left on his cheeks. He was handsome, Draco would say that for him, but handsome didn’t always translate to having clean hands. “And now, is that enough to convince you that your markings won’t send me scuttling away?”  
  
Harry hesitated, his eyes bright forest-green again. “Maybe,” he said at last. “I’ve thought for years that I could never have a permanent relationship with anyone because of what the Hallows did to me. And I’m still wondering if I’m giving you  _too_  much of a chance because you’re the first person who isn’t afraid of me. Am I attracted to you honestly, or making up reasons to be?” He shook his head. “Give me time to get used to the idea and that you won’t run the moment something happens that surprises you.”  
  
“Someone else ran away the moment something happened that surprised them, didn’t they?” Draco asked quietly.  
  
Harry looked away, his mouth tightening. “Yeah.”  
  
“Who?” Actually, Draco was sure of who it would be, but he wanted to hear confirmation from Harry’s lips. He wanted to hear  _many_  things from those lips, and the moan he had got when he kissed Harry was only the beginning.  
  
Harry shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you that. You would only crow about it, and couldn’t possibly be polite to this person when you saw them in the future.”  
  
Draco shrugged. “Very well, then.” Actually, Harry’s assurance that they would meet someday only made Draco surer of his guess that it had been Ginny Weasley who did a runner. A Weasley wouldn’t have the wit to appreciate what a rare treasure Harry was, Draco mused, reaching up to brush the side of Harry’s cheek with his hand.  
  
Harry caught the hand and stood staring at him as if Draco was a marvel of perfect beauty, which made Draco have to turn his eyes away. He could feel his cheeks stinging with his blush, which was an—unusual occurrence. But then, Harry Potter saying all those pleasant things about Draco was an unusual occurrence as well.  
  
 _I shall have to make sure that it becomes more common_ , Draco decided, and looked up into Harry’s eyes. “I hope that you can learn to live with someone who’s a writer, and sees people in terms of characters,” he said.  
  
“That would depend on whether or not you see  _me_  as a character.” Harry’s voice was reserved, his eyes glancing aside again, and Draco remembered that he’d dealt with writers in less than congenial relationships to him all his life.  
  
“The hero’s reward, perhaps?” Draco picked up Harry’s free hand and rubbed the knuckles against his lips, because he wanted to and because he could only imagine, and would soon know, all the marvelous things those hands had done. “Let me assure you that I’m no hero.”  
  
“Even if you picture me as a protagonist,” Harry said, and faced him suddenly, a fierce light burning in his eyes. “I’m more than a character for your books, Draco, just as you’re not limited to the villain or the rival I pictured when we were boys. I have to—I  _have_  to know that I’m more to you than that, that your imagination can’t always encompass me, or this won’t work.”  
  
Draco had to smile as he looked at him. Harry had admitted that he’d been forced to give up hopes of a relationship with most people, and now he had found someone who could offer that to him. But he would challenge even that person, and reject the possible relationship, if they tried to force him to live in confines that his principles couldn’t tolerate. It was shining, and brilliant, and mad.  
  
“I assure you,” Draco said, “that I have no trouble assuming I’ll  _never_  understand some of the things you do, and if I try to put you into a character, one of those actions is sure to come along and shatter the mirror I’m trying to hang.”  
  
Harry smiled at that, and oh the smile was shining and brilliant and mad too, and he murmured, “Then we can begin trying and see if this might work out,” and then he lowered his head.  
  
Draco kissed him, glad to hear that that mouth  _could_  produce other things than moans and noble self-denial when it tried, and drew back to add, “But don’t assume that this counts as the evening of conversation you promised me. I still have far too many things I want to know about you.”  
  
Among the things that Harry’s mouth could produce, Draco learned a moment later, was a current of laughter as rich and warm and soft as a river of sunlight.


	12. Irradiated

Draco swiped his hand through his hair and slumped back against his pillow. Then he scowled at the far wall and muttered, “If you’re still able to take notice of anything in the outer world any more, Yolanda, then I reckon you have your revenge.”  
  
He wasn’t sure if it made matters worse or better that Harry had told him he was sure the dead didn’t remember who they had been after a relatively short time in the world of the dead, at least not in any connected, coherent pattern. Flashes of memories were all that remained to them, like the fragments of many different stories.  
  
Draco rolled out of bed and leaned against the wall of his tower, listening to Justice preening on his perch in the next room. He reminded himself that he was here, he was safe, and that if he really wanted Harry to spend a night or two with him, then he could firecall him. Harry had spent the last few days hinting gently that he didn’t think Draco entirely recovered from his ordeal at Yolanda’s hands, and that he would be happy to help if Draco needed him.  
  
Draco sighed and dropped his head into his hands.  
  
The memories were coiling and rippling through his mind, surprising him with sudden and shocking pain that he thought he had dealt with years ago. A normal dream about a complicated chess problem or somehow having written a book that appealed to  _everyone_  would be interrupted by the vision of himself standing, wand in hand, eyes wide with horror, while a random Death Eater writhed under his wand.  
  
Or Voldemort would be standing over him, threatening him with the deaths of his parents if Draco disobeyed. It wasn’t even that Draco disobeyed all that often; Voldemort was just mad enough to like to threaten people whether they did or not.  
  
Or he would be back in sixth year, pressed by terrible crushing fear. He didn’t want to kill anyone, but if he didn’t, what would happen to his family? And everything had gone so badly  _wrong_ , shattering his illusion that he was perfectly powerful and perfectly in control of his life because he was a Malfoy.  
  
Draco lifted his head and dug his fingers into his hair, tugging on it until he was calmer. Then he dropped his hand with a grimace, because  _that_  was something he hadn’t done since sixth year, either.  
  
Well, presumably the Mind-Healers knew what they were about. Draco went to find the lists of words they’d given him to memorize. He’d only done it a few times each day, because the words were not ones he found exciting and he would much rather think about the stories that occasionally sparked in his head. Maybe he should do it more often.  
  
*  
  
Two hours later, he woke with a start from another nightmare and threw the Floo powder into the fire without further delay, calling Harry. Harry appeared with a calm, alert face—Draco supposed there had to be  _some_  benefits from spending so much time awake at odd hours, such as being able to do without sleep—and nodded when Draco explained the problem in stumbling words.  
  
“Of course,” he said, and a moment later he had Flooed in, stumbling over his cloak as usual, and sat on the couch with his arms curled around Draco. Then he muttered something in annoyance and tapped his wand on the couch. It promptly grew bigger and more comfortable. Draco sighed in contentment as he rolled to the side and piled his head on Harry’s chest.   
  
“So you’re human after all,” he mumbled. “Never thought I’d see you admit the day when you liked comfort.”  
  
Harry hummed in response, his fingers sliding through Draco’s hair and somehow finding all the itchy parts of his skull that he most wished someone would scratch. “Go to sleep, Draco. I’m here. I won’t let anyone or anything harm you.” Draco thought he could hear a smile in Harry’s voice, though it was so low and serious it was hard to be certain. “If someone tries, I’ll call on the dead.”  
  
 _He can, too._    
  
Draco let his arms sprawl over Harry’s chest and sank into sleep.  
  
*  
  
“Er.”  
  
Apparently that was all Weasley could come up with to say when he found Draco and Harry together in Harry’s office.  
  
Draco looked up with a lazy smile from the opening paragraph he’d been scribbling on a piece of spare parchment. Lately, paragraphs and words had been haunting him, swirling around in his head but refusing to form into a coherent story. That was the opposite of the way he usually started, with a character and at least a shadow of a plot based on that person’s real actions during the war, but the words were so insistent that Draco wrote them down anyway. “Yes, Weasley? Was there something you wanted?”  
  
“What are you doing here?” Weasley at least had the sense to shut the door before he almost bellowed the words.  
  
“We’re friends,” Harry said, glancing up at his partner briefly before he turned back to finishing a report on a case that Draco knew to be much more boring than the Timpany case, because Harry had lectured him about it in exhaustive detail. He looked innocent when Draco complained and said that he merely wanted to make sure that Draco had some idea of the truth if he wrote about Aurors again. “Or dating. Or something.”  
  
Weasley sat down hard in his chair, which Draco had noticed was never clean. Sure enough, several pieces of parchment crinkled and cracked in protest, and he had to stand up and pull them out from beneath his arse before he continued. “Harry, the last I knew, you hated him for breaking into this place.”  
  
“Not his shining moment,” Harry agreed, with a sideways glance that made Draco flinch. No one scolded like Harry. Of course, Draco didn’t care about anyone the way he cared about Harry, which made the words sink the deeper. “But we shared some experiences and some truths that make me inclined to trust him.” He shrugged and continued working on his report.  
  
“But,” Weasley said, and then stopped, apparently baffled as to what he should do about Draco’s presence if Harry didn’t find it objectionable.  
  
Draco kept his face turned downwards so Weasley couldn’t see his smile, which would probably spoil things, as he scribbled out the next sentence that had come to him.  _And in light embrace the darkness_. Then he paused and realized that that wasn’t a full sentence, and perhaps he shouldn’t be thinking about Weasley when he tried to compose; obviously it had a terrible effect on his writing.  
  
He returned to his original thought. Harry had told him that this was the best way to handle Weasley: act as though something was merely part of reality, and there was a much larger chance that Weasley would accept it because someone else had accepted it. Harry called it “guiding” his best friend. Draco saw it as more proof that Harry should find other friends. Between Weasley’s shovel of an intellect and Granger’s dagger, the poor man had no idea what a normal mind looked like.  
  
“We’re still trying to decide what our relationship is,” Harry said, with a small shrug and a smaller smile in Weasley’s general direction, and then went back to working on his report. Draco stared at his parchment and tried to figure out how to turn that irritating fragment into a complete sentence.  
  
Weasley sat down at his own desk, still giving them nervous glances from time to time. Harry ignored him so serenely that Draco ceased to watch for pranks from the corner of his eye and became more involved in figuring out how to continue this story.  
  
If it was a story. If the various whirlpools in his head meant anything.  
  
*  
  
“I do not like to think that I once welcomed Yolanda Timpany into this place.”  
  
Draco sat back with his glass of wine. Delicate Summerlands wine, the very best, and a red so bright that it was hard to look at. Draco hadn’t asked for that; Cassidy had simply given it to him after he told her the tale of Yolanda’s death. She leaned on the bar now, staring at the nearest corner where a fire blazed.   
  
“You couldn’t have known,” Draco said. “Or rather,” he added hastily, as Cassidy glanced back at him with that slow way of turning her head that a bull would use, “you knew as much as the rest of us did. Yolanda wrote about real people, and she made use of political victims. None of us realized how much she  _made_  those victims, rather than simply picking them up because she paid attention to the papers.”  
  
“You are quite certain of her ultimate fate?” Cassidy turned a wineglass over in her hands as if looking for flaws in it. The way her fingers curled around its edge reminded Draco of a rock formation he had passed on his way into the Writer’s Labyrinth tonight, ready to spear anyone who took the wrong turning. He shuddered and buried his uneasiness in the Summerlands wine. It was strange to realize that Cassidy frightened him more at the moment than the memory of Yolanda did, but so it was.  
  
“Yes. When Potter kills someone, they stay dead.” Draco hadn’t been able to tell the full truth without revealing Harry’s gifts, of course, but he had been able to say that Harry had engaged in a duel with her and a rescue of Draco.  
  
“A pity.” Cassidy sighed out the words and put the wineglass down. When she turned, Draco found himself pinned with a sharp gaze. He blinked back at her, wondering what he had done wrong that she should look at him like that.  
  
“You have expressed more melancholy this evening than I have ever seen you do,” Cassidy said. “And it has been nearly a month since your  _Golden Stories_  emerged, with no rumor of your working on a new novel. Are you still a writer?”  
  
Draco smiled as he understood, though he couldn’t relax. Cassidy wanted to know whether she should still admit him to the Labyrinth. “I have a story brewing,” he admitted. “But so far it has no title, and it’s only scattered bits and pieces, and I can’t focus it on one figure the way I usually do.” She was the first person he’d told. Draco liked Harry a lot, but he simply didn’t understand the deep urge to tell stories that Draco had, and he had to pacify Angela and his other editors with vague promises of a tale that he was trying to figure out the best way to tell. Angela thought it was the Ollivander novel, and kept suggesting titles that were all terrible. Draco hadn’t  _wanted_  to know that his copy-editor knew that many horrible puns on “wand.”  
  
“Good,” Cassidy said unexpectedly.  
  
Draco blinked. Cassidy leaned forwards across the bar and poked one fingernail into his shoulder. Draco hid a wince and hoped that no one else had noticed. Of course, most of the people in the Labyrinth’s central nook had been leaving him strictly alone this evening once they realized that Cassidy wanted to hear him talk.  
  
“You’ve been writing the same way for more than a decade,” Cassidy said. “Your writing is showing signs of weariness and strain. You should take a different path and write in a different way.”  
  
Draco leaned forwards. “Don’t tell me that until you’ve read  _The Hope-Well_.”  
  
Cassidy looked unimpressed. “I’ve read all your other novels, Malfoy, and I can trace a clear progression. Yes, you gain more control of your technique, and I’m sure you still write the endings and beginnings of your stories in a fever of enthusiasm. But the middles sag and lose their way. The last one didn’t have anything like a plot.  _Fire in the Darkness_  was clear enough at points, but then it would sink back into a slough. It’s all to the good if you have to change your method and start writing in a different fashion.”  
  
“Telling stories about the war is what I  _do_ ,” Draco said patiently. “And basing my novels on the life histories of people in the war is what I  _do_. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be a different kind of writer, I would be a  _non_ ¬-writer.”  
  
Cassidy laughed. “You do not know how many times I have heard versions of that,” she said, when Draco glared at her. “From writers of mysteries, of romances, of comedies, of tracts to free house-elves. It seems as if a new kind of story might be stirring in your head. Rejoice in your good fortune and  _listen_  to it.” She paused thoughtfully. “Besides, have you thought about what you’ll do when you run out of heroes to write about? Somehow, I can’t see you deciding that the minor, ordinary stories of the war are worth your time.”  
  
Draco stared sightlessly at his wineglass, turning it around until a drop of Summerlands escaped down the rim. He had independent confirmation that what Cassidy said was right. Before all of this mess, in the first flush of his enthusiasm for writing a novel about Harry, he had decided that there was no other way for his  _Heroic Lives_  series to end. He’d been thinking of capping it even then.  
  
But why should he? He was young for a wizard, thirty-four in a life that would probably last more than a hundred years, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of it doing nothing, even in the graceful fashion that his parents did nothing.  
  
“I want to be a writer,” he muttered. “I have to tell stories.”  
  
“And I want you to be a writer, so that I can continue to welcome you here,” Cassidy said placidly. “It seems to me that you’re ignoring the obvious—a way that would let you write about the war and use experiences that you know well and yet would change the direction of your writing in a way that would give it new force.”  
  
She turned aside to deal with a moping young poet called Anna Grayson whom Draco considered much too influenced by Boot. Grayson wanted water and sympathy, and got the former. Draco tapped his fingers on his knee, out of Cassidy’s line of sight; she only became more obstinate when she sensed that someone was impatient.  
  
“What do you  _mean_?” he burst out when she turned back. “Of course I want to know how I can go on writing about the war. It was the central event of my life. It defined a generation. Its ripples are still present all around me. Tell me.”  
  
Cassidy leaned forwards. “By using the experiences of the person you know best,” she said. “Yourself.”  
  
Draco stared at her. His mouth was open, he knew, and he probably looked like Neville Longbottom had when Draco first said that he wanted to interview him. But he couldn’t manage to close it yet. It was necessary to let out all the hot air that was suddenly driven out of his head by solid, glittering  _comprehension.  
  
Oh._  
  
The story that bucked to be told and would give him no coherence. The memories that, once stirred up, proved that he could not encompass them in the neat little story he’d told Harry after all. The sentences that insisted on coming out as fragments, because he didn’t yet dare to realize who the subject was.  
  
Now he knew.  
  
“My next novel is going to be the story of  _my_  experiences during the war,” he muttered. “Or my next two novels. I was involved in the war before it officially broke out.” He stared over Cassidy’s head. “Maybe the next  _three_. I’ll have to tell some of my family history—or the history of the family based on mine—for it to make sense.”  
  
Cassidy smiled, and refilled his glass.  
  
*  
  
“I’m going to write my next book about myself.”  
  
Luna ducked her head so that she could look under the table for Wrackspurts, but she didn’t do it fast enough to prevent Draco from noticing her quick smile. “That’s a wise decision,” she said. “I always felt that you needed more words to tame your own life, though it ran wild around you while you sought for the words to tame others’.” She turned and looked at him earnestly. “And wild things can be very beautiful.”  
  
Draco laughed and sipped at his tea, which had a different taste than usual this time. A taste of lemon? Perhaps it was. And he liked it It was another trait that he would add to the character rapidly developing in his imagination. “I don’t even pretend to understand you most of the time, you realize that?”  
  
“Almost no one does,” said Neville, sticking his head into the room from around an inner door. A new ridged scar marked his forehead that looked like a hoofprint, and he bore a similar shallow scar on his right cheek. Draco surmised that the black unicorn had been real enough to leave those marks, at least. “Dearling, do you remember where I put the notes on alternate ways to tame a unicorn foal? I really think I might have better luck with one of them than with the full-grown adults.” He ducked back into the other room before Draco could ask any questions or Luna could reply. She shook her head with mock mournfulness at Draco as she rose to her feet.  
  
“I would blame him for not being able to keep things organized,” she told Draco, “but I know that the Nargles steal his notes. He can’t help it.” She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Have you told Harry about your story yet?”  
  
“Not yet,” Draco said, with a wince as he realized that Luna had said “yet” and he’d repeated the word immediately. It sounded bad in his head. “I’m saving it for an opportune moment.”  
  
“I’ve found that we make our own opportune moments,” Luna said, “the way you did when you chose to give up the notion of putting Harry in a story.” She nodded several times, though Draco had the feeling that she was greeting denizens of the house invisible to him, and then hurried off to help Longbottom with his notes.  
  
Draco finished the odd-tasting tea and smiled.  
  
*  
  
“It’s very daring,” said Angela, stirring the ice in her glass with one finger. “A departure from what you’ve done so far. Striking.” She spent a moment more playing with the ice, acting oblivious of the tension that Draco knew she could feel. Then she looked straight at him and smiled. “Original.”  
  
Draco relaxed. If she said that, he knew he had her approval to go ahead and write his book.   
  
“How many books are you thinking of writing?” Angela asked, brisk suddenly. “How much time will you cover? And do you have a title for the first one yet?”  
  
“Two or three,” Draco responded, sipping at his own drink. He bit delicately at the ice; he was trying to break himself of the habit of swilling ice around in his mouth, since Harry seemed to dislike the sound of teeth impacting on it. “I’ll cover my life up to the time when I became a writer, since that was the first attempt I made to deal with my memories. And I don’t want to write a book about my memories that also deals with my attempts to deal with those memories. There is such a thing as being too recursive.”  
  
“Indeed.” Angela gave a delicate shudder and leaned forwards. “Did I tell you about the latest book of poems that Boot tried to sell us, Draco? Absolutely awful. Every poem only used synonyms of three words, and when one of those words was ‘eye,’ his creativity was stretched to its limits.”  
  
“Which are never very far away in the first place,” Draco murmured, and listened to her story, and laughed.  
  
She either didn’t notice that he had carefully avoided answering her question about the title of the first book, or, more likely, knew that now was not the time to pursue it.  
  
*  
  
Of course, when the moment came that he sat down facing a piece of blank parchment and had to produce, Draco knew what that title would be.  
  
Harry stepped up behind him and cleared his throat. Draco leaned back to look up at him. Harry’s eyes were soft still with sleep, his hair tangled, his chest bare. Draco felt a pulse of intense satisfaction that would have taken them back to the bed if they both didn’t have work. He captured Harry’s hand and squeezed.  
  
“So you’re starting your new story,” Harry said, his voice as gentle and deep and warm as his eyes. “About you.” His hand came down strongly on Draco’s shoulder in a grip of approval that made Draco hum, though he didn’t look away from the parchment again.  
  
“Yes.” Draco dipped his quill in the ink and paused for a long, delicious moment. The words would fill his head when he needed them, but this hesitation before he began the writing made him think he must know what it was like to be a young dragon, walking towards a cliff for the first time, ready to spring and see if his wings would carry him.  
  
“What are you calling it?” Harry whispered the word into his ear, intimate and thrilling and mingling memories of last night with Draco’s sense of anticipation.  
  
For answer, Draco brought his quill out and wrote the title at the top of the page with a glittering flourish.   
  
 _Incandescence._  
  
 **End.**


End file.
